God of Power

Have you ever wondered if you have enough faith? 

It's a question that most of us wrestle with at one time or another (or many times); it's often not helped by others in the church who like to tell us that if we had just a little more faith, God would be answering our prayer the way we want Him to. In fact, there are all kinds of movements (sects) of Christianity that believe in the name-it-and-claim-it kind of faith that just depends on believing well enough. 

And certainly, when things aren't going well and times are tough, it's tempting to think...maybe it's me. Maybe if I just believed God just a little bit more, things would work out okay. Maybe...my faith is the problem. 

But God's power doesn't depend on your faith. Or mine. 

God is God, whether we believe enough or not. God is God, whether we can wrap our minds around it or not. God is God, through all our straining and struggling and groaning and failing. 

One of the stories that I think helps to illustrate this is a story way back in 1 Samuel 5, when the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant from Israel. 

Back in those days, gods were pretty much a personal deal. That is, what god you believed in depended on what people you belonged to. The Philistines had their own god, and as such, they didn't really pay much mind to Israel's God. They took the Ark of the Covenant not because they thought it had some kind of power and would bless them or because they wanted some measure of the Lord for themselves; they took it because it was important to the Israelites, as a token of their God, and the Philistines thought it might demoralize Israel to think they had lost their God in the middle of a battle. 

If you think your faith is the problem, imagine what it must feel like to be responsible for someone else kidnapping your God. Ouch. 

What happens next, though, is everything. Because as the Philistines take the Ark back into their own territory, things start happening. Weird things. Things that demonstrate the power of this God that they don't even believe in. Things that make them afraid of holding onto this Ark for very long at all. 

Actually, they keep moving the Ark around, trying to find a place to put it where the Lord's power won't come down so heavily on them. They even take it to one place, and the guy is like...nope. Nuh-uh. Not here. Are you trying to kill me? 

This is unheard of. In that day and time, the "so-called gods" of another people weren't your problem. They weren't going to bother you because you weren't worshiping them. You didn't have to please them or appease them. It was a non-factor. 

Except this isn't some so-called god; this is God. The Lord. And His power has never depended on whether you believe in it or not. On whether you believe in Him or not. 

And if the Lord who isn't believed in can break the gods of the Philistines and cause a breakout of rats and hemorrhoids in those who don't even acknowledge His power, how much more can He do in you, who are trying earnestly to believe in Him? 

Friend, your faith is not too weak. And even if it were, it would not change God's strength one bit. 

He is God Almighty. Period. 

God Who Speaks

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the calling of Samuel early in the book that bears his name. Samuel is the long-awaited first-born, promised son of a barren woman who prays so earnestly for him that the priest-on-duty thinks she's drunk. Then, once the child is born, she dedicates him to the Lord and gives him to the priest, where he begins to train to serve the Lord. 

Late one night, while Samuel is lying down trying to get some sleep, he hears a voice. Thinking it is the priest calling him, he gets up and runs to the other room and asks the dozing priest what he wants. Confused, the priest denies calling the young man and sends him back to bed. This happens a few more times until the priest figures out what's going on, then he tells young Samuel, "That is the Lord speaking to you. The next time you hear that voice, ask Him what He wants." 

And isn't this just the way God is?

Notice how this story doesn't go. God doesn't speak, then realize He isn't recognized, and get all upset about it. God doesn't speak, realize He isn't recognized, and start yelling. God never once calls the young man foolish or insults him or rails against him for not recognizing His voice. 

Rather, God just continues to speak. The same statement. The same whisper. The same tone. The same patience. The same voice. 

"Samuel."

"Samuel."

"Samuel."

Until the young man recognizes who is speaking to Him. 

So often, we think that God is quick to anger, that He's easily upset by us not getting it. The Bible tells us explicitly that that is not so, but I don't think we comprehend that verse - "the Lord is not quick to anger." I think the story of Samuel helps us to see it a little bit better. 

This is the God who calls us. This is the God who speaks to us. This is the God who keeps coming for us, keeps asking us to come to Him. This is the God who wants us to recognize His voice - not a God who yells when we're slow to get it, but one who keeps calling our name until we do. 

That still, small voice? It is real. And it is God's. And if it takes you a thousand times to recognize Him, He'll still be there calling out to you. 

And when you finally answer? There's no judgment there. There's no God waiting to say, goodness, could it have taken you any longer? No. There is a God who is simply waiting to speak until He knows you're hearing Him and then, my friend, He has so much hope, promise, love, and goodness to speak over your life. 

(Actually, you might be surprised to know this, but He's been speaking it all along. He was just waiting for you to hear.)

God's Redemption

In the story of Ruth, we see the first real redemption in all of Scripture. Sure, God has saved a man or two before now, but it has been somewhat dependent upon what that man does in faith and obedience - Noah's obedience in building a boat, Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, Moses's circumcision of his son. But in Ruth, we see a pure redemption - not resting on any perceived action by Ruth herself. 

Recall the story: Ruth has come with her mother-in-law, Naomi, back from Moab to the land of God's promise. Naomi's husband died, as did her son (Ruth's husband), and the two women are alone in the land. Ruth goes out to see if she can find a field to work in or some way to acquire the basic necessities she and Naomi need to continue living, and she winds up in the field of a man named Boaz, who she later finds out is actually family - the man who could redeem Ruth and Naomi and fold them back into the family of Israel. 

Ruth has been working in Boaz's field for a season and has earned his favor; he's instructed his laborers to make sure she always has enough, but not to be condescending about it. Naomi tells Ruth who this man actually is and sends her to lay at his feet until she gains an ear to tell him who he is and to ask for his redemption. 

After a night of laying quietly at his feet, Ruth tells Boaz who she is and identifies him as the kinsman-redeemer. It seems like a match made in heaven. 

But then, Boaz does something strange - he says he has to wait a minute. He says there is someone else he has to ask first. He says he is really only second in line, and if he's going to redeem Ruth and Naomi, he wants to do it the right way.

Most of us, in our world, would say...what right does this other man have? Boaz is the one who has welcomed Ruth into his field. Boaz is the one who has already been providing for her. Boaz is the one who obviously knows how to treat a woman. Why bother with all the legal mess of bringing in someone else who has no idea what is even going on? Ruth has hit the jackpot in Boaz...but Boaz knows there's a right way to do things. 

God knows there's a right way to do things, too. That's why He never just reached down and snatched His people from the clutches of the world or the devil. That's why He doesn't just push forward in providing for us without declaring for us. That's why when we ask God to step in as redeemer, He says...wait a minute. 

Wait a minute while I put on flesh. Wait a minute while I come to walk among you. Wait a minute while I raise this bread, bless it, and break it. Wait a minute while I submit myself to the world so that everyone who is there can stand as a witness that this deal is legit. Everyone at the edge of the city, everyone who sees My Son raised up on that Cross will be able to say I did it the right way. 

Not because it was easy. Not because it was obvious. Not because it was good. Not because it was natural. 

But because it was love. 

A Ministry of Food

When we think about Communion, we usually think about the Upper Room. About the Last Supper. About the moment when Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of Me." 

But what if, as some translations say, He actually said, "When you do this, remember Me?" 

I think sometimes, we get wrapped up in this one moment, in this one small thing, and we miss the bigger picture of what's going on. Yes, this meal is important, and we should not forget the importance of the breaking of bread before the sacrifice of the Lamb, before the final Passover when one final first-born Son would be slaughtered as a sign of God's glory, but let us not forget, either, how important food was to Jesus's ministry. 

Everywhere you turn in the Gospels, Jesus has food. 

He heals Peter's mother-in-law, and she gets up and prepares food for them all. He goes to Simon's house to eat dinner. He dines with Zacchaeus at his house. He feeds four thousand and then, He feeds five thousand, with plenty of leftovers. When He tells a parable about a prodigal son and a father's welcome, He tells of the father preparing a great, big feast for the lost son. He tells parables of eternity as a wedding with a fantastic table spread out for everyone, even those you have to go and drag in off the streets. He encounters a woman at a well while His disciples are in town looking to buy some food, and when they get back, He tells them He has food to eat that they don't know about. And when He comes back after His resurrection, He meets the disciples in the Upper Room - that very same place where they shared this very meal we put so much emphasis on - and He fries fish for them on the seashore. 

Jesus is all about food. 

But why?

There are, I think, two reasons. The first is the most obvious - food is nourishment. It gives us the strength that we need to carry on and to do the things that we are called to do in any given day, at any given moment. Without food, we would quite literally die. Our bodies depend on it. And in a spiritual sense, our souls also depend on it. Food is vital for life. 

But a second reason, one that's harder for us to understand in our hustle-and-bustle, 24/7 world of drive-thrus and DoorDash and UberEats, is that food gives us a reason to slow down. In Jesus's day, humans ate by reclining at tables together. The Gospels make reference to this when they talk about the positioning of disciples at the Last Supper and how John was closest and could whisper to Him from the correct side. Even when He feeds the masses - the four thousand and the five thousand - Jesus says, "Have them sit down in groups first." You must, necessarily, slow down to eat. 

Now, I know we don't slow down enough to recline together, but eating still clips our pace a little bit. If you've got a sandwich in your hands, it's hard to keep typing or texting. If you've got a mouthful of food, you have to take a pause before you can start speaking again. Even though we've become, it seems, masters at shoving food in our faces without missing too much of a beat, the truth of the matter is that it still slows us down a little bit, whether we feel it or not. 

Jesus, though, wants us to feel it. That's why food was so much a part of His ministry. He wants us to have that space not just to be nourished, but also to slow down. 

How can you slow down and savor this week? What would it take for you to, at least metaphorically, recline for a minute and let the Lord nourish your soul?  

Unmistakable Signs

There was no guarantee that Israel would take their freedom, even if Moses secured it for them. None. He simply could not know how the people would react. And early in his campaign, it was clear they were not reacting favorably. (How could they, when every time Moses asked Pharaoh for freedom, their slavery became more and more of a burden?) 

But this is where God steps in. 

Now, remember - this was not Moses. Moses didn't keep pestering God about convincing the people. Moses only asked God to make his own mission fruitful, to give success to the calling that God had put on him. How long, Lord, until You finally break Pharaoh's hard heart and he will let Your people go? Moses became single-minded about the work to which God had called him - Israelite support or no Israelite support. 

He trusted that if God was going to call him to this thing, then God was going to work out all of the details. 

And work them out, He did. 

See, that series of plagues we're all so familiar with - frogs, gnats, locusts, blood, hail, murder - they weren't just for the Egyptians to witness the power and glory of God; they were for the Israelites, too. 

Israel might have lived in Goshen, but they worked in Egypt. Every morning, they got up and went and saw the absolute devastation of the land that held them captive. And every evening, they went home and saw that their land remained lush and beautiful, completely untouched by the darkness that fell over Egypt. 

We think that it took as many plagues as it did to change Pharaoh's heart, but I think the truth is that God used as many plagues as He did to convince His own people. So that Israel would see His power and glory. So that His people would be ready to follow Him, to go with Him wherever He wanted to go....because they could see, clearly, how He was already taking care of them. 

If someone is taking care of you, you don't let them just move on without you. You want to be wherever they are. I believe God used those plagues to convince His people that they wanted to be where He was. 

After 400 years of slavery, that's something that's too easy to forget.

But the same is true with us. If we, like Moses, are called to something by God, it doesn't matter if the people of God are with us right away or not. There might even be pushback. 

If we stay consistent, maintain our integrity, keep pushing forward and keep pursuing that thing that God has called us to, I believe that God will show up and make it so unmistakable to anyone watching that He's involved in this that they can't help but want to be part of it, too. 

So many good ministries start out this way. 

So many good ministries start out as crazy ideas with a lot of pushback and one person who says, no, this really is on my heart, and I want to at least try it. And then, in trying it, it's clear that God is doing something amazing, so a few more persons come on board. And then a few more. And a few more after that. And all of a sudden, you've got a ministry that is not just doing good in your community, but it's become a hallmark of your church. Twenty years from now, someone might look back and say, "Remember when we thought that was a bad idea? I can't believe how powerfully God showed up through it, and now, it's one of the greatest things we've ever done." 

I can't guarantee overnight success. I can't guarantee success in your lifetime. What I can say is that if God is calling you to it, He will show up in it. That much, I can guarantee. 

And when God shows up, it's really hard for the people of God to keep turning a blind eye for long. His presence, His power, His glory are so unmistakable that it would be stupid not to go along with it. 

No one who saw the destruction in Egypt wanted to stay in Goshen. Not when that kind of God is on the move. 

So shall it be for the rest of us who encounter, and persevere through, The Moses Problem. 

Unholy Resistance

It's hard for us when we encounter The Moses Problem - resistance from inside the church, pushback from those who are supposed to be God's people. We'd like to think that if God has put His stamp on something, then His people are just wholeheartedly in and ready for it, but we know that's not the case. 

The church is, and always has been, full of self-appointed gatekeepers. 

The church has always had its persons who have said no. Who have said we can't do that. Who have said that's not what God wants from us. The church has always had its persons who look at others, even those they have worshiped alongside for years, sometimes decades, and said, "No. Not you." For whatever reason (and actually, there are many reasons, but very few of them good ones), the church, which ought to be the most inclusive, supportive, allied body in the world, has become so very good at keeping even its own members out. 

That doesn't mean God doesn't still want you to do it. 

What God called Moses to do didn't depend on the people's approval. Not really. Moses is called to do what God wants him to do whether anyone else goes with him or not. 

And yet, we cannot ignore the hesitation that Moses must have been feeling. It's not really a question of whether the people of God believe in what Moses is doing, believe in what God has put on Moses's heart, believe in Moses's ability to get it done. Rather, what it all boils down to is this: if Moses is successful, if he actually can convince Pharaoh to let this people go...will anyone actually leave?

I remember several years ago, I had a series of idle conversations with a number of neighbors, not all at once but in close succession to one another. And I discovered that several of my neighbors were independently planning garage sales - one on this weekend, another on that weekend, still a third a bit later. And with each conversation, I mentioned that the person I'd spoken to previously was also planning a garage sale, and eventually, it came to be that everyone agreed I should coordinate a single date for a community garage sale, as this would obviously boost traffic and increase sales for everyone. 

So coordinate, I did. I moved quickly, since some of my neighbors were already ready to go. I even got my own haul out and started pricing things, picking a good Saturday morning with good weather coming up. I made signs. I posted advertisements. Everyone was on board. Everyone was ready to go. 

Come Friday before the sale, all but two of us dropped out. Everyone who said they were ready was suddenly no longer ready. All of the neighbors who had been ready to move on their own backed out of moving together. We ended up having at least three different garage sales over the course of about five weeks or so, and mine was the biggest flop of them all. 

This is the Moses problem. 

Are the people ready to move if you put everything together for them? If you hand Israel their freedom on a silver platter, their arms loaded with Egyptian gold and jewels, will they take it? 

Because at the end of the day, I can move forward on my own. You can move forward on your own. Moses can move forward on his own. None of us needs the support or approval of anyone else, especially if God is the one calling us to move. But there's something very lonely about being the only one out standing on the edge of Goshen and looking toward the Promised Land. There's something very intimidating about standing in front of Pharaoh and demanding freedom for a people you aren't even sure will take it. Will your church get on board if your mission is a success?

That's really the rub. That's really the hesitation. 

What are we supposed to do about that?  

The Noah Problem

Yesterday, I introduced what I called "The Moses Problem" - the fear that the other believers won't believe that God is behind your hair-brained scheme. The fear that other believers won't believe that God really sent you or that He's doing what you claim He's doing. 

As I reflected on that post, I realized that it might be tempting to confuse The Moses Problem with some of the troubles and resistance that other biblical characters came up against. Most notably, I started think about Noah - the character we most associate with being considered crazy by the rest of the world. 

But there is a fundamental difference between The Moses Problem and what we could, I guess, call The Noah Problem, and this is something we have to pay attention to. 

Moses was sent to the people of God and experienced resistance from those who had every reason to hope, at least, that God was going to free them, even if they didn't quite believe it. He was sent to those who had a relationship with the Lord and who were living in His favor in the lush land of Goshen, rescued from a famine and provided for. 

Noah, on the other hand, was a lone wolf in a broken world. We know that the persons around him didn't believe in what he was doing. We know they laughed at him. We know they mocked him, right up until the doors of that boat closed and the rain began to fall. But these were not a people who had a relationship with God; Noah's resistance came from the world. 

Two sides of a similar, but very different, coin. 

In a lot of ways, I think it's easier for us to have Noah's problem. I think it's easier for us to come up against a world that we know doesn't believe. It's easier for us to look at them and say, well, you just don't get it. It's easy for us to say, I'll pray for you. It's easy for us to think that whatever crazy thing we're following God into is going to be a witness to the world; it's going to be the thing that helps them finally get it. And even if it isn't...well, we're the ones safe and dry in the boat. 

It's a lot harder, I think, for us to have Moses's problem. It's harder for us to experience resistance from the church. It's harder for us to go to our fellow believers, be shot down, and still believe in the thing God has made so clear to us. 

How do you keep moving forward when someone else who loves God just as much as you do doesn't get it?

In times like these, we're tempted to start questioning ourselves. To start questioning whether God really said what we thought He said. Maybe these other believers have more wisdom or discernment than we have. Maybe they've been following God longer. Maybe they have more experience with these sorts of things. Then, we start to wonder if maybe we haven't put God's voice in our own heads and simply called it His. 

All of these questions start to swirl in our minds, and sometimes, it doesn't matter if our staff becomes a snake, if our skin becomes leprous, if water becomes blood if the people of God - the very folks who ought to at least share our hope, even if they don't share our vision or our faith - don't believe God has really sent us to do this. 

The easy thing to do is to think we have Noah's problem - to look at our fellow believers and disfellowship them, accuse them of being the world, and like Jesus, declare, "Get behind me, Satan!" We write them off as wolves in sheep's clothing, as apostates, as whatever so that we don't have to deal with the pushback. 

But the truth is - we have Moses's problem, not Noah's. These are our brothers and sisters. And that changes how we have to deal with it. 

The Moses Problem

Moses has one of the most well-known stories in the Bible, and when we talk about what some of his shortcomings might have been, we talk about how reluctant he was to speak for God at all. I think most of us can relate to that a little bit. But I think Moses had another weakness, another hesitation, that is even more common to us than this, something that I think almost all of us can identify with. 

Moses wasn't sure the world would take him - or his God - seriously. 

Early in Moses's story, as the Lord is calling him to go and speak, Moses asks a few questions. The first one has to do with what he's supposed to say to Pharaoh about who God is, about who this God is who sent him. In response, God gives Moses three signs - his staff becomes a snake, his hands become leprous, and water becomes blood. Surely, these things are enough to convince even the hardest-hearted Pharaoh of the power of the God who sent this meager man to speak. 

But then, tucked quietly away in a small little verse, Moses asks the question he really wants to ask - what if Your people, God, don't believe that You sent me? 

What if the people You are trying to save, God, don't want to listen to me? What if they think I'm a quack job? What if they think I'm making it up or that I don't know You the way they know You? What if they discount everything I'm trying to do for them because they don't believe it's Your plan? What then?

This is a question not just for Moses, but for many of us. We have the same hesitation, the same fear. We know what God is asking us to do; it's pretty clear. We understand the assignment, as the kids today would say. But we're not sure we could explain it. 

We're not sure we could get the world, or even the church, to understand what we're trying to do. We're not sure we could convince anyone else to get on board with it. Or at the very least, to not make fun of us or try to discourage us from what we're doing. We're not sure, at the end of the day, that anyone will believe this was God's plan and not ours. 

Sometimes, it's because they don't understand God the way that we do....or they think we don't understand God the way that they do. Sometimes, it's because of our personality and our own history, our own story, that others might be familiar with (or think they are familiar with). It might fit really well into someone else's preconceived notion of us to think we've come up with this all on our own. 

Remember - Moses was a Hebrew by birth, but he was raised as an Egyptian. He's a murderer, and he has a history of putting himself in the middle of things. That's how he ended up running away and being in the wilderness where that bush was not burning up in the first place. It would be really easy for Israel to think that this was just something else Moses was stirring up, some more trouble he was looking to cause. 

Not to mention, they've been slaves for four hundred years. There may not be many left among them who still believe God even cares about them, let alone that He will set them free. 

Moses, likely understanding all of this (and perhaps even more, based on his own personal life experience), reveals his biggest hesitation to God, and it's not that Pharaoh might not listen. 

It's that his own people, the people of God, might not believe. 

Isn't that something we wrestle with, too?  

Amidst My Enemies

When we come to the Table and think about what it means to break this bread with Jesus Himself, we are often drawn to the Old Testament images of the Passover and to the New Testament place of the Upper Room. 

But there's another Old Testament image that has always jumped out to me, and it comes from one of the most famous psalms of all time: Psalm 23. 

The Lord is my Shepherd; I have everything I need. You can probably quote the first line or two by yourself, whatever version you're most familiar with. (Most versions read, I shall not want, but I really like the version I quoted above. I haven't exegeted the Hebrew to see which is closer; I'm not sure if it matters so much.) 

Anyway, as David continues pouring out his heart to the Lord in his troubles, he takes a sharp turn and stops talking about the Lord and starts talking to Him - the pronouns switch from "He" to "You." And after he does this, he makes a bold statement: 

You prepare for me a table in the midst of my enemies.

In other words, in whatever trouble David finds himself, God has set this table and called him to come, sit, eat. Break bread. Pour a drink. While the battle rages all around him, while the enemies are pressing in from every side, while arrows are flying dangerously close and the hot breath of pursuit is breathing down his neck, God does this completely unthinkable thing - He sets a table. 

He puts up a little stone to eat on, throws a red-checkered blanket over it, and starts unpacking the picnic basket. He whistles, and David comes running over, only to sit - yes, sit - instead of fight...and feast. 

And not just David. Us, too. You and me. Every single one of us. God has set for us a table in the midst of our enemies, and that table is this one. 

This is our chance to stop, to pause. To take a break from all the battles we've been fighting all week and to gather ourselves, to restore our spirits, to refuel our bodies. This is our chance to sit down for a second and just let the arrows fly, come what may. This is God's table, and God is at it with us, and if this is God's table and God is here, those arrows aren't going to land. Not right now. This is sacred space. 

Even in the midst of war. 

There's plenty to say about Passover. And about the Upper Room. And about that final night before Jesus's ultimate sacrifice. But I love the image of Psalm 23, and I think Jesus - on the eve of His own death, knowing He was just a few breaths away from being in the custody of His enemies - probably thought about this table, too. This table in the midst of our enemies. 

On my toughest days, I am so, so thankful for this table. 

How about you?

God of Coming Home

At the beginning of the book of Ruth, we see the matriarch, Naomi, moving to Moab to escape the wasteland that Israel has become. In that part of the world, it's natural that some seasons are better than others, and Israel was in a tough season. So it seemed the only thing to do was to take a field trip to better pastures. 

But just six verses into the book, "word comes to Moab" that God has blessed Israel and restored its lushness and all is well, so Naomi decides to go home. 

Now, this raises an interesting question: how, exactly, did word come to Moab?

Maybe Naomi had some distant relatives who stayed behind to try to ride out the tough season, and now that things were growing again, they sent word to her to tell her that she could come home. 

Maybe Moab was starting to enter its own tough season, and now, it was the people of Moab who were looking around for better pastures and found what they were looking for in Israel. 

Maybe someone just happened to be traveling through, carrying a sack full of the best that Israel had to offer to try to trade it for something that fancied his heart. 

Maybe someone from Moab went on a little vacation to visit someone special to them and came back talking about the complete reversal of fortunes taking place in Israel, how the entire landscape seemed to have just come to life since the last time they made the trip. 

There are all kinds of ways that word travels - even more in our highly-connected digital age. But one truth remains the same: 

God doesn't do something beautiful without word getting out. God doesn't do something good without the world hearing about it. 

Think about how many stories you've heard about persons who would never tell their own story, who wouldn't want the attention. It doesn't matter that they don't go around talking about it; someone else does. Somewhere, there is a witness, someone you might not even realize is paying attention to your story, and when they see what God is doing, they can't help but talk about it. 

It's the nurse who watches the miracle on the cancer ward and tells a friend, who tells a friend, who tells a friend. It's the addict who watches a friend get clean and can't help but tell the other addicts that so-and-so really did it; maybe it really is possible. It's the poor widow whose oil doesn't run out. It's the father whose child is set free from a demon. It's the woman at the well who has one conversation and suddenly, the whole town knows the Messiah is among them. 

It's one person spreading one word, whether it's their word or not, because it's God's word and He wants the whole world to know. 

He wants the whole world to know that it's safe now to come home.

And He'll carry that word anywhere - and everywhere - through whatever means possible until all of His people hear it. 

God of Coming Victory

I'll be honest - there are times in my life when I feel like I'm losing. I don't just feel like I'm losing; I know that I am. But I'm also one of those persons who believes that a win is just around the corner. I'm one of those persons that keeps showing up even in the midst of defeat because I believe that God can turn things around in a single breath if He wants to...and I believe that He wants to. 

It makes me seem more than a little naive to a watching world, and even sometimes to others in the church, but there is ample biblical evidence to support such a position. 

God simply doesn't always give a victory right away, even when He's planning to give one eventually. 

Take, for example, that time when God told Israel to go to war against itself. (Judges 20) The tribe of Benjamin has committed a great sin, a tremendous sin, and brought shame upon all of the brothers of Israel. What they've done is unforgiveable; it seems impossible that they could ever be restored to the fellowship of the sons of Israel. The other tribes ask God - what are we supposed to do about this? We can't just let this go. 

And God says, of course you can't just let this go. You should go and attack Benjamin and bring justice upon them. 

So they go, and they are soundly defeated. Just soundly defeated. Totally routed. Totally destroyed. 

So they go back, and they weep before God, and God tells them it's okay, go back and do it again. 

So they go back, and they attack again, and they are defeated. Again. 

At this point, they're like - what's up, God? You told us to go. We went. We lost. What are we supposed to do now? 

Go again, God says. And this time, I will give you victory. 

So they go one more time, and they get the victory that God promised them in the first place. 

Unlike back with the story of Achan, we don't see some big, obvious sin that is keeping God's people from the victory He's promised them. They just...don't win the first couple of times. We could speculate about why, but the Scriptures don't tell us, so anything we come up with would just be conjecture. It might make sense; it might not. But all we have is the truth that for whatever reason, they didn't go out and win right away. 

But then...we don't always win right away, either. Do we? We can choose to do good things, God's things, holy things that we know God would want us to do, and we can believe that God wants us to do them. We can know He wants us to do them. But that doesn't mean we win right away. If you need proof of this, ask any former addict how many times it took them to finally get clean. Just because the victory is coming doesn't mean it's easy. 

It just means it is coming. 

Because if God has said it, it's going to happen. The only thing we can really do, then, is to just keep showing up and trusting in that promise. Maybe we look naive for awhile, but so what? The victory is coming. 

Don't you want to be there for it? 

God of Strength

Most of us think that we could never relate to Samson. Who among us has ever been given the gift of super-strength? We picture him with big, rippling muscles that we are never going to see in our mirror, and it's easy to skip right by that story and think, certainly, that is not what God is doing in our life. 

But I think we need to look more closely at Samson's story. Because there's something important that we're missing. 

Samson's story is not about his physical strength. No matter what you might have been taught about him, that's not the secret of his story; it's not even the heart of it. Samson's story is about God's strength in him, and that's something that we, as believers, ought to be able to relate to. 

Look at what happens in Judges 16. Over and over and over again, Samson finds himself in situations that would render anyone vulnerable. First, he's in love, and his love leads him to do some dumb things (like entertaining his wife's idea of wanting to discover the secret of his strength, even after she proves she only wants to use that information to disable him). Second, he finds himself bound over and over again, wrapped up tight, totally strung up. 

And it is here when God's strength begins to work through him. 

Think about this for a second. If you were to walk in a room and see a man bound up in ropes, you'd think he probably isn't going to put up much of a fight. He's already defeated, so it seems. Then, BAM - the strength of the Lord comes upon him and all of a sudden, you lose. 

This is the story of so many believers around the world and across time. In fact, it's kind of a hallmark of who we are. Think about all of the persons of faith you have known who have seemed defeated in their lives - poverty, illness, cancer, abuse, divorce, addiction, misfortune. The list goes on and on. Almost every single one of us has our story. 

At just the moment when it all seems over, when the enemy walks in the room and starts to laugh because we are so clearly defeated, BAM - the strength of the Lord comes upon us and all of a sudden, darkness loses to light. 

I'm not saying that we win every battle. Of course, we don't. But sometimes, we win even when we're losing.

I just can't help but recognize all of the amazing witnesses to Christian faith whose stories we hear all the time - the cancer patient whose faith changes the staff of the oncology ward; the amputee who inspires others to get off the couch; the addict whose clean life leads dozens of others down a new road. Our greatest testimonies - and God's greatest glory - often come from the moments when it seems so obvious how vulnerable we are, we we already look defeated. 

Then, BAM.... 

God of Nothing

Jephthah has a really interesting story. He was living in a community that should have been his community, but the people there want nothing to do with him because they don't like that he plays by God's rules. So they send him away. Not very long after that when those very same people run into some trouble and start looking for someone to help lead them out of it, they decide that Jephthah is the guy. 

Yup. That Jephthah. The one they already sent away. All of a sudden, they want him and his God.

And when they come to him to tell him that they need his help, his response is...bold. "Aren't you happy with what your god - the god you chose because you didn't like my God - has given you?"  

And then, he rubs just a little more dirt on it. "My God, the one you rejected, is content to let you have everything that your gods were able to give you."

That is, God is perfectly okay with letting you have nothing at all. That's the insult. That's the rub. 

It's also the truth. 

God's not going to force Himself on anyone. He could, but He's not going to. That's what's so funny about the world that keeps getting upset with Christians for "shoving God down their throat." That's not who our God is.

God is okay if you want to worship other gods. It's not His first choice, and if you're a Christian, the rules are different (you shall have no other gods before Me), but as a general rule, from the very beginning, our God has been a God who wants us to choose Him but won't force us to. If you'd rather worship Chemosh or Molech or Baal or money or drugs or rock n' roll, He's not going to stop you. 

But when the going gets rough, He's going to tell you the truth - you have in your life exactly everything your other gods were ever going to be able to give you. You have nothing. And if you've gone chasing after other gods, God's okay if you have nothing. 

Now, if you want to choose the God of the Universe, the Lord, the Creator of All Things, Amazing Grace Himself, He's ready to talk, but He won't be used by you. You don't get to come crawling to Him and beg Him to release you from all of the things you got that were exactly what you wanted when you have no intention of actually turning from those things and following Him. He's not playing that game. You wanted nothing, you got nothing, and if you're not ready to change your life, you can have that nothing as long as you want to cling to it. 

Let go...and let God...and He's got you.

So the question is: are you happy with what your god has given you? 

Table for More Than One

I am single. I have been single my whole life. I didn't plan to be single my whole life, and I didn't plan to be single still at this age. (And I'm kind of hoping that I won't be single my whole life....*wink*.) But this is the reality I live in. 

Being single means that I do most things by myself. When I get in my car to go somewhere, I'm by myself. When I have to go to a scary doctor's appointment, I'm by myself. When I want to go out for a walk or a run, I'm by myself. Because those I am most closely connected to have their own rituals and plans, I spend most holidays by myself. I can't play tennis - I'm by myself. And I eat almost all of my meals...by myself. 

(My situation is, admittedly, a little different because my mom is also single at this stage in her life, and some of these things, we are able to do together. But we rarely eat together, and we certainly do not play tennis.) 

But that's one of the things that I love about the Communion table - it's never set for just one. Communion is the one meal every week that I know I am not going to eat alone. It's the one time I know that there will be bread broken, and it's not just me. It's the one time I am guaranteed to feel connected to other persons. 

There are a lot of single persons in our world. Like me, some have never married. Some are divorced. Some are widowed. Some are separated, whether by animosity or by health or by work or by any number of reasons. Some are empty nesters, so their families have moved out. Some have a significant other, or more, in their life, but it's an unhealthy relationship and for all intents and purposes, they are actually single (and singleness in the midst of connectedness is the worst - like being lonely in a room full of other humans).

I think that those of us who are single in the world feel the togetherness of church, and of Communion, more deeply than those who always have someone to do things with. Than someone who doesn't have to sit at a table alone very often. 

I love having a large family. I love having a big table. I love having a feast so large that we can break it into hundreds of parts, and I can still have some. I love having a place where it is just expected that I will be there, that I will be joining this party. I wasn't invited, per se, but I am expected and welcomed. There is a place for me...and it's not in the corner by myself. 

This is the way that God intended His table. It is. This is what He had in mind. That everyone would come and have a place. That it would be the one thing in our week that we do together, for real. The Table is for all of us. Every single one...and you not single folk, too. 

But I think sometimes, we get caught up in how we do the table and it becomes a private thing for so many. We take our little cracker and our little juice or wine, and we bow our heads and we shut out everything else. That's not how it's supposed to be. That's why I wrote this. 

This week, as you gather around the Table, I want you to think about those like me - those for whom this is the only table they will share with someone else. Those who will leave this Table and go home and eat by themselves, again and again and again, and run errands by themselves and do scary things by themselves and who can't play tennis. 

Think about them, and think about the way that you come to this Table. How can we make it more of what Jesus wanted it to be - togetherness? How can we make sure that everyone who has a place here feels the connectedness of this moment in the way that they need to? How can we use one little cracker and a sip of juice or wine to fill a deep hunger and an emptiness in each other?  

Unity, Not Uniformity

It still sounds like heresy to some to say that we can all read the same Bible and walk away with a different understanding and that this is not only okay, but that it's the way it's meant to be. I get that. 

But I also come from an understanding of the faith that emphasizes unity, not uniformity. That is, we are all on the same page, but we're not all exactly on the same line. If that helps you to conceptualize it. 

Think back to the party that we were talking about a few days ago as an example. We said that one person goes home talking about the food, another about what everyone was wearing, someone else is talking about the dog, still someone else is talking about the venue and the decor. But everyone was at the same party. 

And even while we're talking about the things that we connected to most about the experience, we all agree that 1) the party happened 2) we were there 3) who hosted it 4) where it was located 5) what its general purpose was (nobody leaves a baby shower and insists that it was a costume party), etc. etc. That is, we all agree on the overarching details of the event. We all know that we are, in fact, talking about the same event, even if we're not talking about the same thing about it. 

Now, apply this to what we're talking about when it comes to the Bible. We all read the Bible and have a different understanding, a different emphasis in what strikes us about it. But we all agree that we're talking about the same Bible/the same God. 

We all agree on the big details of the story, the actual things that happened in the section that we're reading. We all agree that we're talking about the same pages. We all agree that God is the central character, and we all agree on the character and heart of God as the central character. We all agree what the locus of the story is, and we all agree on its general purpose. 

I would go so far as to say that if we do not agree on these general things, then something is wrong and someone is in error and we need to take some time to figure out what's going on. 

But in general, we all agree on these things. Read the faith statement of any church, and they largely agree on these things - we believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God; we believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; we believe that Jesus lived and died and rose again for our salvation/restoration/eternity; and on and on and on we go in professions of the faith, and largely, we all believe these things. We believe them in our churches, and we believe them in our homes. And we continue to believe them when we come to our Bible to read it. 

So to insist that someone is way off the mark because their heart connects to God through, say, the decor of His party when our heart is more drawn to the food and someone else spends their night hanging out in the corner is ludicrous. We're all at the same party, and we agree on that. 

Unity, not uniformity. That's the heart of the Christian movement. 

I hope you're starting to see that it's not really heresy. It really isn't. It's okay if you read the Bible and have a different understanding than some self-proclaimed "expert" thinks you're supposed to have. Actually, it may turn out that you are a blessing to that expert because you understand something that is apparently in his blind spot. 

Read your Bible. Engage it with the fullness of your being. Come to the fullness of God. Love your Bible. Love God. Agree on the big stuff, on the heart of the matter. And don't apologize for the personality and experiences God has given you that let you see something different than someone else. 

If it draws you into the heart of God and fills you both with love and with belovedness, that's what it's supposed to do. Nothing more and nothing less. 

Limited Perspective

The Bible isn't meant to mean the same thing to everyone. We all bring to it our own experiences and personality so that some things just strike us differently, the same way we can have a shared experience in any other capacity of our lives and walk away talking about a different aspect of it than someone else who was in the same room. 

The first thing we have to understand about this is that there are some things in the Bible, just as there are things in life, that we will never understand if it only has one meaning. Never. There are things we are just not equipped by our being to comprehend. 

The obvious examples are male and female, just at a very basic level. As a female, I will never understand circumcision. I can have an academic, intellectual understanding of it, but it's not something I can ever know with the fullness of my being. In the same way, a male will never understand labor pains and the excruciating physical toll of childbirth. He can't. He can have an academic, intellectual understanding. He might even witness it in the birthing room. But he can never know it. 

There are other things that are more circumstantial. Most of us who live in a place like America, or most of the other "first-world" countries, do not know war. Not in the way that someone living in Rwanda knows it. Most of us do not know hunger. Not in the way that someone in a famine, like Joseph or the prophet's widow, would know it. 

These folks who say that you cannot understand the Bible except in one very specific way would say, then, that there are parts of the Bible that are always going to remain foreign to you. There are always going to be things that are outside of your reach. Because the Bible only means one thing and there's only one way to read it, the best you can hope for is the academic, intellectual understanding of the things of God. 

And I'm telling you - an academic understanding does not make a faith. 

It doesn't. 

You can intellectually understand everything about God, but that would not help you to understand the most important thing about Him in a way that would be even remotely meaningful - His love. The essence of God is not the facts of God; it's the heart of God. And if we're limited to one single message that most of us cannot relate to, then the fact of the matter is that most of us could not relate to God. 

Which is kind of exactly where we're at. 

Instead, what God has given us is the chance to go to His party, to come to His Word, and experience it fully in a way that is most meaningful to us. Some of us can feel the hunger; some of us recall fondly the provision. Some of us feel the pain; some of us have only witnessed it. Some of us have tasted the goodness; some of us have only dreamed of it. But we all have a way to get there. We all have a way to experience the fullness of the message that God is trying to get across without it having to be an exact one-to-one match. 

Any male who has ever been in a birthing room can attest to that much. He doesn't need to feel the pain to have experienced it in a way that he knows that it is real. 

And that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the ways in which we can have a holy experience and get the message, really get the message in a way that impacts our hearts, without being boxed into one thing and being told that we cannot, in fact, get the message since we didn't get that one thing. It's baloney. 

It's nothing more than a manipulation of the "learned" (however they want to define themselves) to keep them as the gatekeepers of God...and God does not need gatekeepers. Remember what happened any time the disciples said they tried to shut someone down or keep someone out? Jesus told them plainly not to do that. 

The same standard still applies. 

Tomorrow, we'll put the last piece into this so that you might see, perhaps, how much unlike heresy is this proposal that I'm making. And perhaps, just perhaps, it will set you free to engage God's Word however it strikes you as you pursue Him this year...and to not feel guilty about that and to not let yourself be convinced that you're not getting it when your heart testifies that indeed, you truly are. 

There are some things in the Bible that, if it only means one thing, we will never understand. Never. We don't have the experiences or perspectives that would let us understand it, no matter how much someone preaches it at us. 

Are we then to say that the Bible is just not for us? that God has some good word that we're just in the wrong place and time to know? That's absurd.  

Perspectives

All this talk that we have about needing experts to help us interpret the Bible correctly suggests that there actually is a correct way to interpret the Bible - one correct way. What persons who tell you you're doing it wrong are really afraid of is that you're going to come to different conclusions than they do and that perhaps that might challenge their faith. 

But what if I told you that there's not just one correct way to interpret the Bible?

It sounds like heresy, I know. Scholars are right now jumping up and down in their studies or rolling in their graves, depending on their current physical disposition. Pastors are holding their breath, waiting to see what I might say next. Many of you might be ready to give up on me, but perhaps you'll keep reading for just a bit. 

There are very few things, if any, in this world that have only one correct interpretation. Take literally any human experience, ask a handful of humans about it, and you will receive a handful of varied responses. Is that to say that only one person is correct about the human experience and the others are mistaken? Of course not. 

It is to say that we are each unique individuals with our own history and perspective on the world and that we encounter things in different ways. 

For example: 

Watch a movie with some of your closest friends, then talk about it afterward. My guess is that when you talk about it, your friends will bring up things that you didn't notice at all and you will mention some things that were quite important in your opinion, but that your friends missed entirely. Generally, this means that we watch the movie again - both to point out the things others missed and to try to catch the things our friends said that we missed. 

Go to a party. Now, ask others at the party what they thought of it. Chances are that someone will rave about the food; someone will complain about it. Someone else will talk about what so-and-so was wearing, while yet another individual will talk about the dog they were petting all night. Is that to say that one of you attended the party and the rest of you missed it? Of course not. You were all at the same party, but you had very different experiences of it based on what you engaged in and what you're naturally drawn to. It doesn't diminish the party that everyone took their own enjoyment out of it. Not in the slightest. 

Think about the last church service you attended. When you're walking out of the building, someone might be talking about a song that really touched their heart, while someone else is talking about something the pastor said in the sermon and yet a third person remembers strongly a prayer that was said. Would you say that the person who enjoyed the song missed the service entirely because they aren't quoting the sermon? Or that the person enamored by the prayer had a diminished experience because they didn't sing the song with much gusto? Of course not. Everyone came and got what they needed. 

When we read a book, certain things jump off the page at us, and others seem to slide right by. Talk with any of your friends about a book that you both have read, and you'll be surprised to find that you have very different impressions about what was important in that book and how it contributed to what happened. You both might understand the general plot of things, but the way you get there in your heart and mind might be very different - even with the same words to digest. 

If we know that every experience we have is filtered through our own perspective and experience and we understand that it doesn't change the fundamental nature of the experience itself, then why do we insist that the Bible can only mean one exact thing and that if we're not all on the same page, we've missed it? Or we're in error? Or we must be heretics?

The truth is that the Bible will speak to us each in different ways. And it is supposed to. We can all read the same story and come away with different ideas about what it means, and that's okay. Actually, it's more than okay - it's good. It gives us the chance to have a fuller perspective of God than if we were limited to only our own understanding, or only one understanding that maybe we aren't equipped to really understand. 

I know - it still sounds a bit like heresy. But stay with me. Because I promise it's not.  

Inspired

As we begin a new year, it's likely that you have resolved to read the Bible more faithfully. Many Christians start the year with a new gusto for the disciplines, and this is commendable. 

But many Christians also become discouraged fairly quickly. It can be intimidating to try to read the Bible and to understand what it has to say, especially with so many voices out there telling you that you need an interpreter, someone you can trust, someone whose voice will bring clarity and reason to what you're reading. 

The bad news is...that's true. 

The good news is...you already have that Interpreter. 

It's the Holy Spirit, who Jesus promised to send (and then did send) to help with matters exactly such as this. 

My pastor friend on Twitter, the one I follow because he grates against my every nerve and causes me to think more deeply about what I believe, started this year by claiming, "The problem isn't believing the Bible is inspired by God. The problem is believing your interpretation is." In other words, it's great if you know and understand that God inspired the authors of the Bible to write what they wrote, but it's a problem if you claim to understand any of it. 

He even says that this year, he's working on a book about biblical interpretation, drawing on all kinds of expert voices to help you know what those words meant to their audience and what they should mean to you. (Hint: he's very...liberal...with his interpretations in general, so this is a book to be cautious of.) 

But there are plenty of voices out there that claim this same thing. Big voices, little voices. Pastors with pulpits with thousands in the pew and sometimes, that older Christian in your own church who's just been studying faithfully on their own for a few decades. For some reason, we have come to be really condescending to one another about how we understand the Bible. 

Foolishness. 

Here's the truth: there is no language without interpretation. There is no language without both a speaker and a hearer (or a writer and a reader). If I write these words and no one ever reads them, they are not language; they have not transmitted a message. And I also realize even as I write these words that you will not read them with the same voice in your head that I have while writing them. You won't. That's just how communication works. There is always some distance between transmission and receipt, between what is given and what is understood. There is no way around this. 

So when someone tells you that you can read the Bible but not understand it correctly, what they are really saying is that your interpretation will be off. For whatever reason they want to claim - unskilled comprehension, diminished academic capacity, narrow perspective, whatever. 

But here's what I believe - I believe that the God who inspired the writing of the Word also inspires the reading of it. I believe that the God who told Moses to write us the story of the Exodus has equipped us to read the story and understand it. I believe that we don't have to uncover seven different layers of historical information and the nuances of Hebrew or Greek to have a confident understanding of what God is trying to say to us through His Word. 

Because He's already given us the authoritative interpretive voice that we require - the Holy Spirit Himself. That's what He was promised to us for, so that we can understand and can know God. And not once in the promises that Jesus makes about the Spirit that is to come does He tell us that this spirit will come so that we better understand ancient Hebrew history or the squiggles of language that are far different from our own. 

No, the Spirit speaks heart-to-heart. And that means, so does the Word. 

So if you're undertaking the reading of the Word this year, good for you! Soak it all in. And don't let anyone intimidate you into thinking you can't understand it. You absolutely can. You've got this. Because God Himself comes alongside you in the person of the Spirit and speaks your language, heart-to-heart.  

Communion

If you know me, you know that one of my favorite parts of church is the celebration of Communion. In my tradition, we take Communion every week as part of our regular worship service. And for many years (more than a decade), I have had the honor of offering devotionals for our gathering around the table. 

For years, I have been asked if I have compiled a collection of my Communion devotionals anywhere, and the answer to that is, "No." No, I haven't. Not because I don't think it's valuable or because I don't want to share, but because of the process by which I have come up with every word I have spoken. 

When I speak about the Table, what I speak is authentic. It's raw. It's not scripted. Generally, long before I am invited to the front of the service, I have had a spark of a thought about this sacrament we partake in, and I have planted it in my heart like a seed. I have let it grow there for any period of time, from a matter of hours to a matter of weeks, and when it is ripe, I will pluck it and offer it to my brothers and sisters as an invitation to dine with Jesus. So every time I have spoken, I have spoken from the heart and spoken from what I personally have needed to hear or to reflect on.

To have written these down beforehand would have lessened what I would say in the moment. It would make me feel the burden of craftedness, of scriptedness, and I think it would have introduced for me a sense of pressure, then guilt - pressure to get it right and guilt/regret if I failed to recall something I had been particularly struck by in my writing. 

And afterward, it feels almost forced, like that moment has passed. I have already harvested that seed, and it feels old already, even in a matter of hours. It truly belonged to that breath, to that moment, and once that bread has been broken, I have already moved on to the next seed. 

It's a running joke among some of the elders and leaders in my church that I always "have one in my pocket," and that's almost true - I always have one in my heart. I always have at least one seed that I have planted, that I'm watering, that I'm letting grow. 

But. 

But it's been a long time. Due to my long-term absence from my church family (medical reasons), it's been awhile since I have been able to share a devotional, and it's been even longer since I have been able to gather around this table. And...I miss it. 

So I thought that this year (as long as I can remember, I suppose), I would like to take Fridays on this page to share some Table devotionals. Some that I have spoken before and some that have been planted for awhile, but never harvested. I want to use this space to invite you to dine with Jesus, to break the bread, to drink the cup, to celebrate in remembrance this table. 

Because I miss it. Not the speaking; the fellowship. I miss our time together. I miss our common meal. 

And maybe, just maybe, this also serves as that collection that many have been asking me about. By the end of the year, there should be roughly 50 or so of these moments together, and that's at least a good start. 

So will you join me on Fridays this year for Supper? 

Created For

We're talking about the difference between who God created us to be and what God created us for - and I said that if we can get this right, it will change everything. 

I promise it will. 

See, the truth is that while God has created us all differently, each with our own unique gifts and burdens and flaws, He's actually created us all for the same thing. 

He's created us for His glory. 

He's created us for goodness and for grace. For mercy and for forgiveness. He's created us for stumbling through this world, trying one step at a time to get closer to Him. He's created us for kindness, for doing good to the stranger and the widow and the orphan and the homeless and the hungry. He's created us for one another. He's created us for love. 

These are the things we were created for, no matter how they manifest themselves through the way we were created to be. 

So in my case, I talk about having a high sense of justice, of right and wrong. And there's a way in which I live into that and think of myself as some kind of warrior for justice, some kind of militant for rightness. And this is what makes me miserable (and also a jerk). 

But if I take my understanding of myself and shift it just a little so that I understand myself not as a warrior for justice, but as an offering of goodness, as a testimony to God's glory, then I start living my life looking not for injustices that I can rage against, but for opportunities for goodness. My perspective shifts - it seems like just a little bit, but it's everything. 

If I look for what is wrong, I will find it. But the opposite is just as true - if I look for love and for opportunities to love, I will find them. 

This is about the greater good, the higher calling. At the end of the day, God has created my life not to be a reflection of justice or injustice, but of goodness and glory and grace and love and joy. It just so happens that He's created me to have to balance that within the burden that I carry for justice. 

Am I making any sense?

Then let me just stop and say this: I'm thinking about this because my burden is sometimes really heavy, too heavy for me to keep carrying it like this. So this is something I've been rolling around in my heart for a bit. What I want most in the world is not to set it right, even though that's an easy, natural default for me. I realize I'm not the savior of this world; that job is already taken. I'm never going to fix every brokenness; that's not what God created me for. 

God created me for goodness, and I want to shift my focus and start being goodness in this world. God created me for grace, and I want to be grace in this world.

I can spend my entire life trying to make things right and never succeed; there will always be more brokenness than I can fix. Even if I could get the entire world to agree with me and embrace what I'm saying, my impact would be extremely limited.

But if I do what God created me for and bring goodness into this world, bring grace into this world, bring love into this world, then there really is glory for His name. There really is something there to speak of. There really is something meaningful about that. 

So here I am, trying to shift from living so much out of the way I was created and live more into what I was created for. Here I am, trying to make the emphasis of my life not justice, but goodness. Here I am, trying to embrace the idea of goodness as both a simpler and better way to live a witness. 

Here I am, trying to let goodness speak louder than passion. 

At the end of the day, that's what I was created for. 

And so were you. 

Created to Be

One of the ongoing struggles in my life - and probably in yours - is the tension that I feel between who God created me to be and what God created me for. 

We are all wired a certain way, a way that God needed to wire us for us to fill the us-shaped hole in His creation. Like Esther, we were made for such a time as this, whether we understand it or not. And most of us spend our lives trying to discover who we are, how we're wired, and how to live with that. 

Me, I am wired in such a way that I have a high sense of justice. Of right and wrong. Of order. I look at the world and see, instinctively, where it is broken and how it could be better. How it could be fixed. I see what is wrong, and I know how easily what is right would fix it. I am heartbroken over the poor decisions, the poor systems, the general poverty of this world that keeps human beings trapped in things they are desperate to get out of. 

When I look at this world, I see the little guy first. I see the forgotten, the broken, the downtrodden, the ridiculed, the hopeless, the weak, the sick, the lame. I see those whose burdens are heavier than their strongest muscle, whose darkness seems somehow impervious to the light. 

This is how God created me. This is the burden He gave me to bear. 

And this does two things to me: 

First, it makes me a jerk sometimes. It makes me a jerk because it's so obvious to me what's wrong and how to fix it. It makes me a jerk because I want the world to do the right thing, and I don't understand why it refuses to do so. It makes me a jerk because I can easily come to a place where I demand a wrong be righted, an error be corrected, an injustice be made right. I ask for things that seem so obvious, so simple, and if they are not granted, I can get really self-righteous and write you off as an idiot...and that makes me a jerk. 

Second, it makes me miserable. It's hard for me to understand why something so obvious goes completely off your radar so much that you can't even see it. It's hard for me to understand why you won't just listen to me and fix things. It's hard for me to understand how we have settled for so much brokenness in our world - not only settled for it, but we seem to accept it. Am I really surrounded by a world that doesn't want better things for itself? How does someone like me even deal with that? 

My misery is only complicated by the first reality - that is, I am even more miserable because I know the way God has created me is making me a bit of a jerk, and I'm not really a jerk and I don't want to be one, but sometimes, it feels like the only way to get the world to listen is to be brash about it. And then, I immediately regret it and, well, here I am. Miserable again. 

Because this world is broken, and so am I, and there's nothing I can do about it. 

But one of the things that I'm learning in this season is that it doesn't have to be this way. Not only does it not have to be this way, but it's not supposed to be this way. 

Most of us figure out who we are, and we decide that's just our burden to bear. That we have to figure out how to live with the things we cannot change about ourselves because fundamentally, who God created us to be must be what He created us for. So maybe God created me to a be a loud-mouth jerk with a high sense of justice who can't stop putting her foot in her mouth and who is doomed to go to bed every night both regretting her decisions and mourning over a broken world. 

That's not, though, how God intended me to live. It's not how He intended any of us to live. 

We think that what we were created for is tied to how we were created to be, but that is just so slightly (yet, dramatically and painfully) off. And if we can make this shift in our heads and our hearts, it will change our entire experience of our existence...and the trajectory of our witness in the world.  

Jubilee

I awoke yesterday morning, as did most of the world, to a new page on the calendar. A fresh start. A series of wide-open opportunities. 

And I also awoke to a social media full of friends bidding farewell and good riddance to a "terrible" year and looking forward with all of the hope and optimism they could muster for a new one. 

It struck me how profoundly so many of us are looking for an opportunity to start over, to make new choices, to try again, to take a different path, to achieve new victories, to win new wars. To breathe again. 

As I sat for a few moments and reflected on this, it also struck me: 

God already planned for this. 

He called it the Jubilee.

Jubilee is an Old Testament idea, although it is referenced a few times indirectly through the events of the New Testament. It is the idea that after every seventh seventh year (so every 50 years or so), everything just resets. Slaves are set free. Land is restored to its proper ownership. Everything you borrowed gets returned, and everything taken from you comes back. Your life defaults to its baseline of operations, the slate is wiped clean, debts disappear, and you get to truly start over and take a different path. 

Whatever troubles you've had, overcome. Whatever struggles you've had, forgotten. Whatever missteps you made, forgiven. Everything, all at once, becomes new all over again. 

Factory reset, if you will. 

This is the story - the heritage - that we, as a people of God, have been sitting on for thousands of years. Most of us don't celebrate the Jubilee the way they used to, the way the Old Testament Hebrews would have, but it's in our heritage. And more than that, it's become full in our story, in the story of Christ. 

Christ makes all things new again. He is the Jubilee. 

And as I sat and reflected on how much the world is longing for this kind of thing, I wondered why it is that we who hold this story let the world think it all boils down to some artificial number, some digit that we created, on a page that we printed and that we'll print again. I wondered why we have let the world think it all comes down to one simple ticking of the second hand on the clock. I wondered why we have let the world believe it gets one chance at this in 31,536,000 and that if they miss it or if they mess it up, they have to wait until it rolls around again to start all over. 

No, friends. We hold a story that says you can start all over with any breath, at any moment, at any second. We hold a story that lives in the shadow not of a giant ball covered in diamonds, but in a giant stone rolled away from a tomb. A story that says this is your moment, your Jubilee, in whatever breath you want to take it.

And if you miss it? If you mess it up? Take that breath again. You don't have to wait. 

Every year, the world watches and waits for this moment, for this chance to be set free, for this opportunity to start over. Every year, the world longs for Jubilee. And you can almost hear the collective sigh of relief when that second hand ticks away, when that page turns, when everyone feels like maybe they can breathe a little again. When the whole world is filled with hope - even more at this moment, sadly, than at the one in which Hope Himself became flesh.

But we, the people of God, have that Hope in the flesh. We have it right now, and we don't have to wait for it. 

And I was just thinking...as much as we know the world is longing for this, what can we do to help them have it? Not just when the page turns, not just when the clock ticks, but with every new breath they draw? 

This year, I'm thinking about how this story I hold can set the world free....and I'm thinking about how I can help give it to them. 

Witness

If we cannot stand for truth without being wrong-headed and coming off like jerks, but we are not comfortable standing down and letting wrong win and being doormats, what are we to do?

The obvious answer is that we must maintain our right-headedness. 

That is, of course, easier said than done, especially when the world doesn't seem to be listening to our even-tempered, completely-rational selves as we present a masterful explanation of the truth and rightness and why it matters and how it's better for everyone. Sometimes, the reality is that even being right-headed and reasonable doesn't make the truth win. 

So what then?

Well, then, I say, we turn to our witness. 

At the end of the day, our witness is the only thing we can really control. We can't control how the world responds to us. We can't force the world to embrace the truth or to give space to what is right. We can't make the world honor our right-headedness or even notice is. The only thing we can control is how we, personally, respond to things. The only thing we can control is how we live in light of what we know to be true and right and good. 

That's why, by the way, our wrong-headedness is such a detriment to everything we are trying to do. The world knows it's the only thing we really control, and well, if we can't control even that.... 

Anyway, we only control our witness. And that means that we present our case, but if it's not accepted, we live it anyway. We live truth anyway. We acknowledge what looks like a loss, but we refuse to accept defeat in our personal lives. 

We continue to pursue what we know is right, what we know is true, what we know is good. We live embracing all that we can even in a world that refuses to acknowledge it. We step down or step back, but we never give up or give in. We don't become rude or obnoxious about it. We don't do it wildly out loud so as to put it in everyone's face. 

We simply...move on. Living in the truth that we have. Embracing what is good. Standing on what is right. 

In doing so, we show that we were right, and honestly, the world takes more notice of something that works out for the best than it does of someone shouting in the streets. The world notices the quiet things a lot more than we think they do, and that's the paradox here - most of us want to shout louder until we are heard, but we have a better witness by living quietly so that we are seen. 

The world seems to believe, no matter what, that you can't argue with results. A lot of times, we hear this said most directly when the means are a little questionable, but it works the other way, too - when the means are quiet, simple ways of faith and a gentle living witness, the world will still admit...you can't argue with results. 

When the world sees our peace. When it sees our joy. When it sees our successes. When it sees our options. When it sees how things are really going for us because we choose to live in a truth that looks like it was defeated just because, perhaps, it was shouted down, the world can't help but notice and say...okay. I guess it works. I guess that was right. 

I dare say that no one has ever been drawn to Jesus because they were told about Him, but only because of the witness lived out in front of them. 

The way we live matters. 

And that's what I'm thinking about in this season as I think about how many times I haven't been wrong, but I have been wrong-headed. Because all of the rightness in the world isn't doing a thing if my witness is wrong. And when I'm wrong-headed, my witness is wrong. 

So that's what I'm working on. (Well, that's one of the things I'm working on.) Because I'm really not a jerk, but if I'm being honest, you wouldn't be wrong sometimes to think that I am.