God of Resurrection

There's been much written in apocalyptic literature, even that claiming to be Christian apocalyptic literature. Many Christians have been taught to look forward to that day when Christ comes back and the righteous are swept up into the heavens while the wicked are "left behind" to toil and suffer and perish. 

So, then, it's always been important to make sure that when that day comes, you're one of the ones that Jesus is going to take with Him. 

But what if...Jesus is taking everybody? 

There are probably as many theories of resurrection and heaven as there are human beings - believers and unbelievers alike. In fact, one of the great challenges that unbelievers have when considering the Lord is the notion of a God who can choose between persons and send some to eternal hellfire while saving others. What kind of God does this? 

But Paul says, in one of the many defenses that he gives for himself over the course of the book of Acts, that he believes, as many others believed at the time, that God will raise all people from the dead - the righteous and unrighteous alike (Acts 24:15).

And in fact, I believe this, too. 

I believe that when this is all said and done, we will all meet Jesus. We will all see God face-to-face. We will all see the accounting of our lives. 

But unlike what has become recent traditional teaching in Christianity (fairly recent, in the 2000 years of Christian history, anyway), I believe that when we meet God, all of the things that He never created in us will be burned away like chaff. We will be purified and restored to the being that we were created to be and restored to the Father who loves us. 

All the broken things of this world, all the trauma, all the defense mechanisms, all the pain, all the meanness, all the rebellion, all the evil that has gotten into us on this side of Eden will be burned away. For some, that may take a long time. It will be more excruciating for some than for others, depending on how we have led our lives here, but it will happen.

That's also how Jesus can say, in Revelation, that everyone will be given the name that only He knows - they will become the creation He envisioned in them when it all began, and they will see and know themselves for the very first time in wholeness and goodness and yes, "very goodness," just as Genesis said it was always meant to be in God's eyes. 

He will rest again and so will we, together. 

And if that bothers you - if you're right now thinking about that person that you don't think deserves to go to Heaven - then try to imagine it. Try to understand what it might mean to know them as a restored being, fully and wholly as God intended them and, well, not broken. And you not broken, either. 

For Paul said it, the early church declared it, Christians across the ages have believed it until very relatively recently - God will raise all people from the dead. 

Rejoice! For this is very good news indeed. 

God's Chosen

I am unlikely as far as Christians go. That is, if you had looked at my early life, you would not have imagined I would ever step anywhere near a church, let alone belong to one, let alone praise the Lord for the kind of life I'm living. 

But here I am, 40 years on, and I don't just praise God; I point others toward God. I take God into the dark places of the world and whisper Him in the quiet places and shout Him in the loud ones and have been called to do His work in a way that I never could have imagined looking in the mirror. 

And every time I think about where I am and how far I've come and how much hope I have for the future and what an absolute miracle my life is, I'm blown away by the realization that God chose me for this. God chose me for this long before I ever chose Him, and He's been guiding my steps through all the hard places to come to this one. That doesn't mean that somehow, I've reached an easy place, but that I recognize that the place where I am right now is exactly the place God has for me...

...the place He's had for me since before I knew there was a place for me at all. 

This is how God works. This is how God has always worked. 

He chooses us long before we choose Him, and He plans out some of the cool things that we're going to get to do long before we even think about doing cool things, and there's something beautiful in the way our lives are going before we ever understand there's anything beautiful at all. 

Flashback to the book of Acts: 

There's a young Pharisee named Saul who applauds the persecution of these new Christian folks, who aren't even called Christians yet. He prides himself on defending the name of the Lord and fighting for the law and the way things have always worked in God's economy, and then he's blinded on the road on his way to persecute Christians in another town, and God leads him to this devout guy named Ananias, who first objects to having anything to do with Saul because he knows it may put his life in danger, but then goes and gives the young Pharisee his sight back through the power of the Holy Spirit and is there for the moment that Saul becomes Paul - the same Paul who will go on to evangelize much of the known world at the time. 

In Acts 22, Luke tells the story about the encounter, through Paul's words, and he says that Ananias told him that God chose him from a long time ago to fulfill this specific mission. God knew, when Paul was still Saul and even before Saul came to be, that He was going to transform this man from a Pharisee to an apostle and send him out into the world.

He knew this before there was a fall, before there was a flood, before there was a king, before there was a prophecy, before there was a virgin, before there was a cross, before there was a tomb, before there was a resurrection, before there was a Gospel, God knew that He would make this man and change him in this way and give him this mission and that he would fulfill it. 

And He knows the same about your life and story. He knew before you were born what you were going to do in the world, how He was going to form you, how He was going to shape you, how He was going to change you, what He was going to send you into the world to do. 

And everything in your life is leading toward that vision He has. 

Lean into it, enjoy the ride, and think about the folks you meet along the road. 

Policy and Procedure

There's a way that we do things. And there are reasons that we do things the way we do them. And there are consequences to doing them that way. 

There are things we consider when we're deciding how we do things and things that we don't consider and things that we consider, then decide not to consider any more and things that we haven't considered that end up surprising us. 

I am fairly fond of saying that it doesn't much matter to me what we do as long as we're consistent about it. When I see policies and procedures being violated, my conclusion is that we either need to enforce the policy that we have or re-evaluate and change it to match what we're actually doing. It's hard to function in the world when you don't know what it expects of you, what it requires of you, and where it restricts you. 

And yet, there are also times that I basically scream that we must re-evaluate what we're doing, but honestly, I'm screaming into the abyss. 

In just the past week, I've run up against both. 

I've run up against breaches of policy that have caused me to push and say that we need to either enforce or evaluate because that's going to be valuable for how we function in that space. But then, just a few days later, I came up against policy that we desperately need to re-evaluate because it's hurting folks. Real folks. Real hurt. 

Maybe that's the deciding factor for me - are we hurting anyone or are we just creating chaos? If we're just creating chaos, then let's step back and decide what we want to do about it. But if we're hurting folks, let's throw the whole thing out and try something different. 

The truth is...things in this world can change. The effects of our policies can change. The impact of what we're doing can change. And it's not enough to sit back and say, "We already thought about this and made a decision, so there's no point in revisiting it or considering a different decision." Sometimes, there is a point in that. 

For example, if you give someone a certain responsibility and it later becomes apparent that they are not capable of handling that responsibility, then it is a failure of the system to sit back and say, "We already decided to give them that responsibility. There's no need to reconsider any of that." This assumes we don't live in a changing ecosystem. It assumes that things are static and persons are reliable and that nothing is ever deceptive or broken. 

Our due diligence requires us to always be re-evaluating our policies and procedures. (And not just the formal ones.) The reality of living in a fallen, broken world is that we have to keep playing it by ear for as long as we're living here, able to adapt and change and make adjustments as necessary for the outcomes that we want, whatever we determine those to be. Because the road that gets you there today might need a little tweaking a couple of years from now to get you to the same place. You might have to make a little fork in that road tomorrow. You don't know. 

But you have to be ready for that. You can't just sit back and say, "That's the policy. That's what we decided, so that's what we're doing." Because it won't take long before what you're doing will take you some place you don't want to go, and you'll end up there without even realizing that's where you're headed, and then you'll look around and wonder how it happened...and it happened because you were more confident in the policy than you were invested in the outcome. 

So be flexible. Reconsider things. Take new information into account. Make a new decision. Alter your course. Do what it takes to get you where you're going. Invest in your outcomes. Take ownership of your decisions. 

And...do something good and beautiful in this world. 

God Beyond

A few years ago, my cousin had a baby. When her baby turned one, she asked for everyone to send him a letter to read on his 18th birthday. Any letter. Sealed, addressed to him. She thought it would be cool. 

I haven't seen this cousin in at least 30 years, and I haven't met her son. And I might never meet her son. 

But I wrote him a letter to open when he turns 18. 

And in that letter, I told him that we've probably never met - maybe once (a family funeral, perhaps). I told him that doesn't matter. I told him that the world is full of friends you haven't met yet in places you've never been. And as I wrote that letter, I was thinking about all the wonderful persons I have met in my life in strange places, in unexpected ways, at just the right moment when I needed them. 

Like the six-foot-six white guy with dreadlocks that I met in the middle of a cornfield when I was traveling a long distance by myself for only the second or third time in my life. That guy was a God-send. 

But then, God already knew that. 

The apostle Paul knows what I'm talking about. 

When Paul was traveling in his ministry, he came up against some severe opposition in Corinth. He was feeling the pressure, feeling attacked, unsure if he wanted to continue, and God came to him with reassurances. 

God said, "Don't worry about it and don't back down in fear. I have more people here than you can see right now, and you are surrounded by folks who will support you because they love me" (Acts 18:10). 

In other words, "Paul, there are good persons all over this world, and you're about to find out how powerful that truth is." 

At just the time when Paul needed a friend, God had one for him. God actually had many for him. In strange places, in unexpected ways, at just the right moment, God says...I got you. I've got you surrounded with all the support and love and protection you're gonna need. 

The same is true today. 

I don't know what my cousin's kid might think when he reads that letter I wrote him, but I hope he at least considers that it might be true - that this might be a world full of friends you just haven't met yet in places you haven't been yet. That there is more good around you in this place than there is danger or anxiety or fear. That there is a way to move through the world without being scared of it and, if you're not busy being scared, you might just find something beautiful. Something that might be the best thing to happen to you in a long time. 

Someone, I might say. 

Because God's got people all around you, whether you can see them right now or not. 

God is Sufficient

Most of us have never worshiped an idol - not in the way that we imagine worshiping an idol might look like, not in the way that we worship the Lord. We have never made a graven image and bowed down to it and burned sacrifices and offered a portion of our lives to it in exchange for its kindness and favor. 

Certainly, we do this with all kinds of things without a conscious awareness of it, but we have not made shrines in our homes for the express purpose of worship. 

So it's hard for us to understand how very different from other gods the God of Israel really is. 

The world has always had its multitude of gods. Gods for everything - for the heavens, for fertility, for farming, for building a home, for raising kids, for the water, for the wind, for whatever. And it doesn't matter what god you're talking about, there is one basic rule: 

You have to keep coming back and feeding it. 

You're not allowed to forget these gods. You're not allowed to neglect them. You're not allowed to go too long without sacrificing to them or they get angry. Really, they get hungry and being hungry makes them angry. Yes, the gods of the nations have, for thousands of years, been...hangry. 

If you don't feed them, they don't eat, and if they don't eat, then they can't act like a god and do whatever they're supposed to do with whatever they're supposed to do it with. The fertility gods cannot create you a baby if they're hungry. The gods of the harvest cannot grow a seed if they haven't eaten themselves. 

So in worship of these gods, there's this constant pressure, this constant balance, this constant searching for what you can feed them and how much and how often and how much to their liking so that they can be the gods they are supposed to be and you can get what you want to get from them - their favor, in whatever arena they propose to be god over. 

Therefore, when the God of Israel comes and says that He doesn't need our sacrifices, that raises eyebrows. When He says our sacrifices are not His food, but our surrender, that's revolutionary. When we get to forget Him, ignore Him, neglect Him, reject Him and He still gets to be God, that's unheard of. When He does not depend on us, it makes it harder for man to know what to do with that. 

Because, well, we have always thought that we controlled our gods, but the Lord makes clear that we do not control Him. 

He's God. He's God with or without us. (He prefers to be God with us.) He doesn't need anything from us (Acts 17:25). We don't have to feed Him. We don't have to appease Him. We don't have to cater to His ego. He's just God. 

So very different from all of the other gods. 

God's Discretion

The church has never been far from scandal, even as far back as its very beginnings. In the early days, the biggest scandal facing the church was...the Gentiles. 

For as long as they had considered themselves God's people, the Jews had believed that God was theirs and theirs alone. Then, along comes this Jesus guy who says that it's not just for them; it's for everybody (which is actually what God first told Abraham all the way back in Genesis, when He said that He was going to bless the nations through the faithful man). And the early Jews-turned-Christians spent the first several decades of the church trying to figure out exactly what 'everybody' meant. 

Does it mean everybody? Like, even the Gentiles? 

To demonstrate that everybody means everybody and that yes, that even means the Gentiles, God comes and gives the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles in exactly the same way that He gave it to the disciples and the Jews who gathered early. 

And the faithful are like...wait, what? Can this be real? Is this really what God is doing? 

But God acts at His own discretion. He does what He chooses to do, whether it fits our human understandings or not. Whether we agree with it or not. And that's really the conclusion that the early church comes to - 

God does what He does, and who are we to argue? He gives to those He chooses to give to in the ways that He chooses to give to them and invites who He wants and welcomes who He wants and the only thing we can do with that is agree and go along with it (Acts 15:8-9). 

Two thousand years later, this is still hard for us. 

It's still hard for us when the person we don't think is worthy clearly gets what we think they don't deserve. It's still hard for us when someone we think ought to be on the outside ends up somehow on the inside. It's still hard for us when someone we don't agree with still manifests the love of God somehow, and we can't argue with that. 

It's still hard for us when we're so busy trying to draw lines and God is still drawing circles. 

But if we look at what's actually going on, if we step back and really consider it, there's actually not much to argue with. If we, who were present to receive the Holy Spirit, see someone else receive the same Holy Spirit, how can we keep trying to draw lines around that? If we, who know God's love, see someone else come to know that same love, how can we say they don't deserve it? 

Have we looked in a mirror lately? 

God acts at His own discretion. He is good and welcoming and loving and merciful and gracious and kind to whoever He chooses to be those things to, and it's not up to us and it's not up to our understandings and it's not up to our traditions and it's not up to our doctrines or our dogma or our bylaws or our opinions. It's not up to us. 

And thank goodness it's not or even we might not be on the receiving end of His love. 

God Cleanses

The Bible gives us a lot of rules about what (and who) is clean or unclean. Beef and pork and lamb and rock badgers and two different fabrics and mold and mildew and blood and emissions and periods and death and sacrifices and all the things. And God's people spent a really long time - thousands of years - trying to live by these rules, trying to keep themselves from unclean things, separating themselves from the community until morning, engaging in ritual bathing, cutting out the mold, burning the offending substance in fire. Again, all the things. Because there are a lot of rules about what (and who) is clean or unclean. 

Christ only has one rule:

Everyone is clean. 

Everyone is clean until they choose not to be clean and even then, it's kind of iffy.

See, until Christ, nothing unclean was ever made clean by being touched, but after Christ, that all changed. Before Christ, if you touched a bleeding woman, her blood might get on you; after Christ, His blood gets on everything. Before Christ, if something died, the death, the offense of lifelessness, might spread to you; after Christ, death walks right out of the grave. Before Christ, you had to really scrub the walls of your house to try to get the mildew off; after Christ, everything has been washed and made clean. 

Do you get it yet?

Peter really struggled with this. He was a guy who had spent his whole life keeping the commandments, separating himself from unclean things, following all of the rules. And then Christ comes to him and tells him that He wants the young apostle to go to the Gentiles, and Peter's like...what? The Gentiles? 

Do you know how unclean it is over there, Lord? 

And Christ gives him all kinds of visions to show him...it's not unclean over there (Acts 10:28). Under the blood of Christ, what's clean and unclean has changed. While it's still true that nothing unclean becomes clean again by being touched by someone clean, it's more true that what was once unclean becomes clean by being loved. 

And that's what God is sending Peter to do. 

Go love them. 

Go love them in the Gospel and tell them about Me and tell them about grace and tell them about mercy and show them about love. 

Show them that blood is catching, but this blood makes them clean. Show them that death is defeated, that we walk right out of the grave. Show them that they not only can be washed clean, but they have been. 

Don't worry about getting a little Gentile on you; worry about getting Me into the Gentiles. 

And that's still the mission for the rest of us today. There is no place in the world left unclean if we are willing to enter it with love. With grace. With mercy. 

With Christ. 

The Rules

I am, by my nature, a rule-follower. Tell me that's the policy, and I'll do my best. Give me an exception to the rule, and I'll remind you what the rule is. Especially in the field in which I work, the rules are the rules for a reason (most of the time); they protect safety and dignity. 

But I'm also a logical person, so if something doesn't make sense to me, I will work diligently to prove it's a flawed system even while I continue working within it. 

So the rule is the rule...until I can prove that it's doing more harm than good and can get it changed to something better. 

I was working on a project in this vein just this week. 

Then, this morning, I was reading in 1 Samuel. 

Saul is king, and the armies of Israel are set up against the armies of the Philistines, and it's one of those stand-off type arrangements, though before the most famous one with Goliath. There's a rocky ravine and an army on either side of it and Saul's son, Jonathan, decides he's tired of all the waiting and crosses the ravine with his armorbearer and starts the fighting. Not only starts the fighting, but is decisively winning. Saul wants some of that action, and the armies mobilize, and victory is certain. 

Now, while Jonathan is away doing the actual fighting, Saul is back with the rest of his army, making silly rules. He tells them, for example, that no one is allowed to eat until they defeat the Philistines. 

It makes no sense at all to make your army weaker. God didn't tell Saul to make his army fast. Saul didn't know that the battle was already starting; he honestly didn't know when it might get actually started. He's just making arbitrary rules that he thinks sound good - nobody gets to eat. 

Then Jonathan, who is off doing the actual work, comes back into the fold of the camp and someone catches him tasting a little bit of honey that he found, and all of a sudden, Saul is ready to even kill his own son for breaking the rule. 

The rule that was not grounded in anything reasonable and that Jonathan didn't even know about because he was busy working while Saul was making policy decisions. 

And if that isn't the world we live in sometimes, I don't know what is. 

Some of us are out there working and others are sitting back making policy decisions without even thinking them through. Then, we show up in the midst of things and just do what we're doing, do what's shown to be effective, all but secure wins for our groups or families or organizations, and someone inevitably steps in and says, "Hey, you can't do that. There's a rule about that." 

There's a rule about that? That you made while I was busy doing the actual work and you all were just sitting around talking about it? A rule that you want to hold me accountable to even though I didn't even know it existed? So weird. 

Thankfully, the army came to Jonathan's defense and refused to let Saul kill him, God stepped in with mercy, and the whole army moved on. It doesn't always happen that way for us in the real world, but it does happen that way in God's world. 

So at least there's that. 

No point, really. Just something I'm thinking about right now. 

God Plus You

One of the greatest things on this side of heaven is the community of God's people. We are part of His plan for each other, and we're all better for it when we lean into that. 

Fairly early in the book of Acts (chapter 9), Saul is on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians there. It was one of his favorite things to do; it made him feel good about himself and what he was doing for the name of God. But along the way, he was blinded by a tremendous light that came with a thundering that everyone heard. All of a sudden, this young man standing so tall in his own confidence was groping around in the darkness, still trying to find his way forward. 

God was already ahead of him on that one, too. God went on to the place where Saul would end up and found Ananias and told him that Saul was coming. The plan was that Ananias would meet Saul, lay his hands on him, give him his sight back through the power and plan of the Lord, and be a part of the transformation that would spark an incredible explosion of the Gospel throughout the region and beyond. 

Here's the thing: God didn't need Ananias. 

He didn't. God blinded Saul all by Himself. He could have restored the man in exactly the same way, all by Himself. One act of God could have been followed by another and the story might have remained much the same - Saul would still have become Paul, would still have traveled throughout the region, would still have written his letters, etc. 

But something essential would have been missing. 

Namely, the way that God partners with us for His will. 

This is a really important part of our relationship with God...and His with us. It's something we absolutely have to understand if we ever hope to understand, even a little bit, this Lord we serve. Yes, there are plenty of gods in this world who act autonomously, who do whatever they want in their own power because they can. They like to demonstrate how great they are by showing what they can do without us, just because they are so much bigger and stronger and greater than us. 

Not so with the Lord. Because our God isn't drunk on His own power; He is overflowing with love. And love...requires a partnership. Love requires a relationship. Love requires not a power dynamic, but something much greater. 

So throughout the Scriptures, we see God over and over again partnering with us to accomplish His will and purposes. 

Abraham has to climb the mountain before there is a ram in the bushes. Noah has to build a boat before his family is saved. The priests have to step into the raging waters before God parts them. Israel has to march around the city before the walls fall. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have to go into the furnace before God joins them there. 

The entire story of the Bible is not just God's story; it's our story with Him. It's His story with us. It's what is accomplished by invitational love - the kind of love that keeps bringing us in to do beautiful things with it. With Him. 

The only question, then, is...what is Love trying to do with you today? And...will you join Him? 

God Made All

If you've read the Old Testament, then you know just how long it took Solomon to build the Temple of the Lord. And if you've kept reading, you know how long it took Nehemiah to restore it. And if you've read after that, you know that Israel spent most of their history trying to rebuild and maintain the Temple of God because that was where God came to dwell among them. His presence, His glory, filled the place, and that's where they knew He was with them. 

When you're a people who have put so much work into a project like that, it's easy to take credit for it. It's easy to make it the shining piece of your own history, the thing you've done so much for, a testament to your own faithfulness and steadfastness. Look! We have created a beautiful Temple that God Himself lives in. 

But never forget that the entire Temple was God's handiwork, not ours. He gave us the blueprint down to the very cubit, and in that sense? We were merely the labor. 

Then you get to the New Testament, and we are told that we are the Temple of the Lord, the place where God dwells. Right here in our hearts. And certainly, there's no way we can take credit for our own creation; Genesis is clear that God made us with His own hands, too. He knelt in the dirt and formed it together and breathed into it the breath of life and of His spirit. 

After, you know, He flung the stars into the heavens and separated the waters and formed the light and filled the earth. After by His own hand, He created everything else. 

And it is this to which Stephen is referring when he faces the accusations of those who are not happy with his theology, who are threatened by the perspective that he has on God's world. He says, plainly, didn't God make all this? 

Or, more accurately, he speaks as the Lord Himself - Has not My hand made all these things? (Acts 7:50)

It is the quickest way to put everything - including ourselves (and the Pharisees who think they are better than us) - back in its proper place. If God made everything, there's nothing you can take credit for. If it's all God's handiwork, then it's not your shining achievement. If God did it by His very hand, then you, my friend, did not, and the only thing you can do is humble yourself and be thankful that you get to be part of it. 

By the grace of God, we sometimes get to get our hands dirty in the work, but do not be fooled - it is still God's work. Still His design, right down to the very cubit. We are here only because, by grace, He invites us into it. 

We would be wise to remember that. 

Has not My hand made all these things? It has, Lord. It has. 

God Goes In

In Acts 5, the apostles are put in jail by the leading priests and Pharisees for preaching the Gospel - the good news of Jesus Christ, who the leading priests and Pharisees thought they had killed and finally put to rest. 

Also in Acts 5, by a mighty act of God, the apostles are freed from the jail in the middle of the night and found preaching again the next morning by those who were coming to persecute them. The apostles just sort of shrug and say, "We have to preach Christ. What else would we do?" 

And for many of us, this is a story about the bravery of the apostles in the face of persecution, an example for all Christians everywhere to choose the path God has called them to regardless of what the world says or what obstacles might be in their way, regardless of the personal cost. 

But as I read this story again recently, what jumped out to me was not the apostles; it was the angel of the Lord. 

How many folks do you know that will break into jail? 

That's the crux of the story. It's not the apostles' bravery or resolve or whatever; it's the fact that here is God, yet again, sending His messenger into the hard places, right into the heart of the imprisonment. It is God who shows up and opens those cells. It is God who sets the prisoners free. 

The same God who goes into the fiery furnace to walk around with three faithful men from Israel. He didn't even rescue them; He never opened the door or pulled them out or anything. He just walked around with them. 

The same God who parts raging seas to let His people cross on solid ground. He's the One who steps into the waters. 

The same God who takes our nails in His hands and hangs our shame on His cross. 

Yeah, the apostles are cool, but I have a God who breaks into jail for me, into all the places where I'm captive. If there ever were a damsel in distress moment in my life, if I had even a little bit of damsel in me, my God is a God who comes to rescue me, wherever I'm at. 

In the top of the tallest tower. Behind the dragon's keep. Across the moat. From east to west. In the fiery furnace. In prison. Wherever. God is breaking in to get to me. 

And that's a really cool part of this story that we don't give enough credit for. 

God Speaks

It's a magical thing when you hear the Gospel in your own language. 

One of the hardest things about seeking God is walking into a gathering of His people and not knowing the language. I'm not necessarily talking about the spoken language; I'm talking about the rhythms of worship of any particular congregation. 

You walk in, and it seems like everyone else knows when to stand, when to sit, when to kneel, when to move, when not to move, when to bow their heads, when to take their bathroom breaks, when to break the bread.... It's a choreographed dance that you haven't been to any rehearsals for, and it feels like you're messing it all up. 

I've been there. I get it. 

But it's always been that way. Even from the very beginning, there were those who knew the rhythms and those who didn't. Those who understood what was going on and those who didn't. Those who were paying attention and those who weren't. 

Shortly after the final events of Jesus's life, the believers were gathered in Jerusalem, which you'd think would remember the hubbub of not that many days ago (we are at Pentecost at this point) when Jesus was crucified, then the tomb was empty, then He kept appearing to everyone. But somehow, all of a sudden, the believers are struck and start talking in other languages. 

Not unknown languages, but the languages of the persons around them. Persons who were also right there in Jerusalem. Persons who might have seen some of the events of Jesus's life play out, but not understood them. And all of a sudden, the stories of Jesus are being told impromptu right there in the gathering, in a ton of different languages (Acts 2:6).

For the first time, they were hearing it in their own tongue. 

For the first time, they were "getting" it. 

See, God doesn't have some mystical, magical, other-worldly language that He calls us to learn before we can understand His story. He doesn't have some rhythm set up that we haven't rehearsed. He isn't hiding behind a series of secret steps and movements and motions that we have to figure out in order to get to Him. 

He speaks our language. Whatever that is. Wherever we are. 

It's not gibberish. It's the language of our souls. (And, yes, our tongues.) 

I think that's important for those of us inside the church to remember, especially as we work to intentionally make ourselves welcoming to those who are seeking. To those who have maybe heard a few stories or seen a few things or caught a few whispers but who had never heard the Gospel in the language they actually speak. We have to be mindful about speaking the language of the lost. 

After all, that's what God Himself would do. 

He showed us that much at Pentecost. 

Problems

Recently, I was talking with someone who thought they had a problem with their home - a serious problem. In hindsight, they said they probably should have paid attention to it sooner, done more maintenance, etc. I said I wasn't surprised. 

Last week, I found myself in the emergency room for the first time on a new insurance plan. Not knowing how much it would cost me, I kept thinking to myself, "They'd better find something that makes it worth the cost." I'd been sent to the ER for suspected appendicitis, which would of course be worth the cost, but instead turned out to be something acute that was significant, but not yet "serious," but could turn serious.

Is taking your car for routine oil changes, maintaining your lawn mower, paying for a yearly service plan for your HVAC system, going for an annual dental cleaning...worth it? 

The truth is that most of us have trouble shelling out the money for maintenance when there's nothing wrong with what we've got. We don't even like shelling out the money if it's something small. We always think, "Maybe it's not a big deal. Maybe it will just get better. Maybe I'll get used to it." 

Then, we end up drowning in our serious problems because they suck everything we've got in reserve right out of us, and we look back in hindsight and wonder...should I have done something sooner? 

The question we really have to be asking ourselves at any given point is whether we're as willing to invest now to avoid a problem as we would be later to fix one? 

Are you willing to take what you have today and put it to use to make tomorrow better...or would you rather have what you have and cross your fingers and hope for the best? 

It's silly, really. We live in a fragile world that is even more fragile by the day. The stuff that is manufactured today is made to fail; everything has a shelf life. And yet, we all try to live like our stuff isn't falling apart. 

Like our lives aren't falling apart. 

Like we aren't falling apart. 

And then, things fall apart and we feel betrayed, but the truth is, we never did what we were supposed to do to keep this from happening. We couldn't, we say, justify the cost of maintenance when nothing was wrong, but now, the cost is astronomical because everything is broken and fixing it...is not optional. You can't just not have a refrigerator or an air conditioner. You can't just let your teeth rot right out of your mouth. You can't just let your appendix rupture. 

But as I was thinking about my non-appendix medical cost and wondering if it's worth it, I was really thinking about this. The truth is - we found a problem that was at a correctable stage. Do I feel like I was robbed of money because it wasn't life-threatening yet? Am I upset at having to spend so much only to find out it wasn't urgent after all? 

Is it worth it to me to spend that money to find the problem while I can still fix it without costing more - more time, more money, more energy, more risk, etc. - or does it feel like a waste because it wasn't already at that point? 

Is it worth it to you? 

Most of us would rather pay $700 every decade to replace an appliance we never maintained than spend $30-80 here or there to tweak the little things that would keep it running for far longer. It's just hard to get us to justify maintenance. 

And yet, good maintenance goes such a long way. 

In case you haven't figured it out yet, this is a post about stuff...and it's also a post not about stuff. And in both regards, the question I have for you is this: 

Would you invest as much today to avoid a problem as you would later to fix one? What do you need to be investing in right now? 

God Reveals Himself

After the Resurrection, something incredible happens: 

Jesus just keeps showing up everywhere. 

Right from the very beginning, He appears to Mary. Right there at the tomb. She thinks He's the gardener. 

He walks with some of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; they think He's a fellow traveler. 

He pops into the Upper Room while the disciples are gathered on more than one occasion. Some of them immediately know that it's Him; it takes some others a little bit longer. Some require a little more proof. 

He's hanging out on the seashore, grilling fish, while the disciples are out fishing. They spot Him from the boat and one of them says, "Oh my gosh - it's Him," and another one jumps into the water to get to shore faster. 

John tells us, in the latter chapters of his Gospel, just how often Jesus keeps showing up, appearing, revealing Himself to folks.

It's not the first time...or the last time. 

See, showing up has always been God's way. It was His way in the Garden, when He was strolling by even as Adam and Eve dove for the bushes. It was His Way by the Jabbok River, when He wrestled with Jacob. It was His way in the wilderness, when He dwelled with Israel in cloud and fire. It was His way under the broom plant when the prophet was famished. 

It's been His way from the very beginning, and it's still His way now. 

When you're least expecting it, there He is. Or, rather, here He is. Somewhere right beside you. Somewhere where you most need Him. 

Maybe He looks like the gardener. Or a fellow traveler. Or someone you know. Or someone you can hardly believe. Maybe He's just going about regular business, doing nothing spectacular or even something so plain as making breakfast. Yet, if you keep your eyes open, you see Him. 

You can't help but not see Him. 

Because God reveals Himself. Over and over and over again in the places where His people are living and loving and trying to dwell, where they're seeking grace and hope and faith, where they're trying to figure out what to do next, where to go from here, what just happened...here He is. 

Immanuel. Still. 

God with us. 

Forever. 

God Knows

Have you ever laid awake at night wondering if you actually did that thing you thought you did, or that thing that you went in the kitchen to do but might have gotten distracted? Have you turned back home to make sure you locked the door? Have you double-checked with a friend to figure out if you actually did something or only thought about doing it? 

This is the curse of being human - not knowing whether we've even done the things we intended to do, sometimes wrestling with the insecurity of not being able to remember. To know. Always wondering if there's one more thing or something we forgot or some new little detail that's going to pop up that will take what we think was a finished job and make it unfinished. 

We burn ourselves at both ends trying to accomplish things, but we never quite feel like our work is finished. Even if we did it one hundred percent right, there's something always nagging at us that we missed something. 

Not so with Jesus. 

Perhaps some of His most famous words were, "It is finished." These, He spoke as He breathed His last on the Cross. But He actually knew it was finished before He spoke it. 

John 19:28 says, "Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, Jesus said, 'I am thirsty.'" 

I am thirsty. At the moment that Jesus knew that everything was finished, He did not say, "It is finished." He said, "I am thirsty." 

He knew it was complete before it was over. He knew He was done before He died. He knew that what He had been sent to do had been accomplished. Before the spear, before the tomb, before the stone rolled away. 

He knew it was finished. 

So He asks for a drink. 

It seems so strange, so casual to us. Think about finally being caught up on stuff, finally feeling like there's nothing too pressing, and grabbing a drink and a few minutes to yourself to relax. 

The death of Jesus was agonizing - that's how we portray it. But I think, in those last moments, it wasn't. I think that's maybe what captivated everyone around Him at that moment. He knew it was finished, so He settled into peace...before He settled into death. 

There was no question left in His mind. There was no hesitation. There was no wondering. He wasn't asking whether something else was to come, whether there was another shoe to drop, whether He missed a moment or mishandled one, whether He really had done everything He set out to do. He knew. He just knew, and this allowed Him to relax. To settle into peace. 

To ask for a drink. 

I want that kind of chill in my life. I want to be able to let go like that. I want that kind of confidence. To know that it is done, that I did what I was supposed to do, that there's nothing else I can do, and to be able to just let it go and settle into peace. 

His final, unagonized breath tells me it's possible. 

God of Victory

"In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

Jesus spoke these words while He was teaching His disciples about what was to come, about how He would be betrayed, about how He would die, about how they would think it was over, but about how He would come back. 

And we quote these words quite often. We use them to encourage ourselves when life gets difficult. Jesus said we'll have trouble; why are we surprised? But take heart! Trouble only lasts for a night time; joy comes in the morning. 

Then, we turn our eyes to the Cross and the tomb and the stone rolled away. 

Except...

That's not what Jesus said. 

Jesus spoke these words before any of those things happened, and He spoke them in the present tense. He never said - I will overcome the world; He said - I have overcome the world. 

I have overcome the world already. I have overcome the world by being here. I have overcome the world by teaching, preaching, working miracles, coming in flesh. 

Immanuel, God is with you, and in being here, in bridging that gap, in crossing that divide, in reaching out My hand and putting it on the hurting, I have overcome the world. 

The blind see. The deaf hear. The mute speak. The lame walk. The demon-possessed are sitting clothed and in their right mind. The unclean are made clean. The powerful have been humbled. The humble have been empowered. The sinners have a place at the table. The tables have been turned over. The old is made new. The lost have been found. 

I have overcome the world. 

I think it's hard for us sometimes, when we're looking for Jesus, when we're looking for that power and that inspiration and that assurance in our lives, to look to the Cross and to the tomb and to an eternity that is promised to us, but that always only leaves us waiting for a day. As a popular phrase suggests, it's possible to be so heavenly-minded that it does us no earthly good (to put a spin on that phrase), and that's when so many of us start to struggle in our faith. 

Heaven is nice, but Lord, I need you now. 

And Jesus says, you have Me now. It's already done. I am here, God with you, and I have overcome the world by My mere presence in it. The same presence that is with you now. 

How much, then, does it change today for us to know that God is with us? How much does it change today for us to realize the miracle of the incarnation? How much does it change today to know that before the Cross, before the tomb, before eternity, He is and He has overcome the world. 

Just ask the blind man. For he has seen it with his own eyes. 

God is Home

God makes His home in your heart. You've probably heard this - or some version of this - somewhere in your Christian walk. It's the kind of thing we teach to our young children, something that seems to be relatable and understandable no matter what your age. 

One of the places where we see this expressed in the Scriptures is in John 14, where Jesus says that if anyone loves Him, they will obey His teaching, and then God will come and together, the Father and the Son will make their home with them (v. 23). 

And it's easy to think, well, God's moving in. 

But when I think about this passage, another passage comes to mind. I start thinking about the one where Jesus sends His disciples out to do ministry in the region. He tells them that whenever they come to a village, if someone welcomes them, then they should stay with that person for as long as they are there, embracing the welcome and making a temporary home. 

If someone doesn't welcome them, they are to shake the dust off their feet and walk away. 

Do you see the parallel? 

God desires to walk with men. It's what He wanted from the very beginning, when He walked with Adam in the cool of the day. Contrary to what deists believe  - that God simply set the world in motion and stepped away - God actually desires to be present with us. It's why He came as Immanuel. 

But He's not going to stay anywhere that's unwelcoming. He's not going to force Himself somewhere. 

So when I read that God wants to make His home with me, I read also that that means I need to make my home welcoming to God. I read that God is sojourning through this world, doing ministry, loving others, working miracles, and that He's looking for a place to stay while He's here. 

That place to stay...is in me. It's in my home. It's in my heart. 

And if I make my heart a welcoming place for Him, He will move in and stay here while He's working in this region, while He's doing things in my community, in my family, in my life, in my heart. He will dwell with me, and it will be a mutually beneficial relationship. 

But if my heart is not welcoming, if I do not make it possible for Him to dwell here, He will shake the dust off His feet and keep moving. 

So, then, God making His home in my heart is not merely an act of faith; it's an act of hospitality. He doesn't force Himself in; I have to make room for Him. I have to make welcome. It's not something that just happens, not even when I profess belief; it's something I have to be intentional about - creating the space, opening the door, inviting Him in to dwell. 

And then...and then, my friends...truly beautiful, wonderful, miraculous things happen. Not just in my home, but all around it. 

Because the Lord has made a home here with me. 

Hospice

As you may know, I have a heart for hospice. I love healthcare, but I love hospice, and if I spent the rest of my life with the dying, I'd probably be okay with that. 

But the thing about hospice is that it frequently gets used incorrectly. Or...less-than-optimally. Especially when I see it in traditional healthcare settings. 

The true definition of a person on hospice is a person with a terminal illness that will result in their death within the next six months. That's right - a full six months. And should God have different timing in mind, hospice can be extended for another six months and six more after that and six more after that...until the terminal illness takes its full course. 

That's because the true nature of hospice isn't to help you die comfortably; it's to help you squeeze the most life out of your final days as you can. Yes, hospice is not really for dying; it is for living. 

Still, too often, hospice is called in at the last hour, in the final few days, when there's nothing left to do but to make someone comfortable. When there's not much life left to squeeze out, if any at all. So folks have this impression of hospice as the team that comes in when there's nothing else that can be done. 

Imagine if you didn't wait that long. 

See, hospice comes in in the final days and family members are gathered and they say, "We just can't watch him be in pain any more" or "We don't want her to know what's going on," and they expect hospice to induce a kind of out-of-it-ness that will remove their loved one from the decaying body they're still trapped in. 

What if you wanted those things for your loved one before those final, hard-to-watch, painful hours? 

That's what hospice is supposed to do. It's supposed to come in early and manage pain for the living, not the dying. It's supposed to come in early and fill the terminal space with so much life that you can almost forget what's going on. It's supposed to come in early and make the last season comfortable, not just the last hours. And there are so many ways to do that besides morphine drips and mouth swabs. 

At the same time, as I have been thinking about this, I have also been thinking about my own eventual fate. I mean, we are all dying. Every one of us. Myself included. 

I spend a lot of my time investing in my wellness, in my strength, in my healing. I'm always doing exercise, running, walking the dog, engaging in rehabilitation, working to make my life better. But sometimes, it occurs to me that in the end, all I'm really hoping for is to die strong. That's the end - that's what's going to happen. I'm going to die. The only question is whether or not I will die strong, whether or not I will die having squeezed as much life and strength and vitality out of my seasons as I can. 

Every time this thought comes into my head, it makes me stop and think about what I really want, what I'm really doing, and what's really possible. And whether this is the best time that I have or whether it might be better some other way. 

We think it's morbid to think about, but it doesn't have to be. It's just life. And, well, death. There's no getting out of it. So just as we're hesitant to call hospice in "too early," as though there is such a thing, and thus miss out on the full benefits of what it has to offer, we are often too hesitant to think of our own eventual demise and miss out on much of our own lives, as well. 

Just something I'm thinking about. Thought I'd share. 

*If you ever need to talk hospice, hit me up. It's seriously a passion of mine and probably always will be. It's the way God's wired me.  

God Speaks

There are persons in this world who just like to hear themselves talk. 

Jesus is not one of them. 

Throughout the Gospels, we hear the voice of God. We also hear the voice of Jesus. And we are told repeatedly that this voice has not been for His benefit, but for ours (i.e. John 12:30). 

In that specific verse, Jesus is predicting His death and indeed, the time is approaching, and a voice booms from the heavens and declares Him the beloved son. John tells us the whole crowd heard the noise and knew that the heavens had spoken to Him, but Jesus said - it wasn't because I needed to hear it; it was because you needed to hear it. 

At His baptism by John, the heavens opened and thunder roared and a dove descended. Again, none of this was because Jesus needed a sign from heaven; it was because those around Him did. 

When Jesus was praying, He specifically said, "I pray these words not for us to hear (me and You, Father), but for their sake...." The disciples and the others around Him were the ones who needed to hear Him pray. 

In my life, I have been around those who like to hear themselves speak, and quite honestly, they are very boring and not very encouraging. I even find myself boring and not very encouraging when I'm talking a lot, usually to try to establish some sense of presence or authority or value. 

But I have also been around those that I desperately needed to hear speak. You know these moments. They are usually tense or at least, heavy. Burdened with an air that is so thick you almost can't breathe. You're looking into each other's faces, and something is silently begging in your heart - say something. Or you're dealing with someone you know loves you, and they just haven't said it yet, but the timing is oh so perfect and you're holding your breath - say something. Or you messed up at work and everybody kind of knows it, but nobody's said anything yet and your boss keeps walking by your desk and shooting the breeze - say something. 

I think the crowds, at these moments when the heavens thunder, was having that same kind of sensation. Their hearts were in their throats, they were starting to suspect, they were beginning to hope, they were thinking about believing, everything was hinging on this little gnawing of understanding that was creeping up in their hearts, and they just needed that one thing, that one little thing, to push them over into fuller faith. 

Say something. 

So He does. 

The Lord speaks, not to hear Himself talk, but because we need to hear Him. His voice is, as Jesus Himself said, for our benefit. 

Do you hear it? 

God the Sinner

In a world built on cultivating "likes," it can be easy to fall into the trap that we are what we appear to be. 

We are whatever everyone else thinks we are, whatever they interpret us to be, whatever it seems on the surface. It doesn't matter what our real intentions are; it only matters how they are perceived. It doesn't matter what's in our heart; it only matters what it looks like. It doesn't matter how diligent we are in projecting exactly what we want to project; it only matters how someone else sees it. We are who others think us to be. 

And so, of course, we do our best to cultivate the image we want them to have of us. 

Not so, fortunately, with God. 

Jesus was always doing stuff that nobody would have ever expected a Messiah to do. Not even a Messiah, but just a regular ol' faithful guy. Just a good Jew. Just someone who actually loved God would not do the things that Jesus did. 

It was why there was so much tension between Him and the Pharisees. They couldn't believe there could be anything good about a man who associated with sinners, who touched the unclean, who broke the Sabbath, who spoke perceived threats against the temple, who blasphemed - He claimed to be God, for crying out loud. 

The Pharisees did everything they could to convince the crowds that this was no "good teacher" they were following; this sinner was going to lead them astray. 

Lead them right away from the hundreds of man-made regulations the Pharisees had imposed on them. 

The question is put poignantly in John 9, when the Pharisees are yet again determining that Jesus can't be any kind of a good or holy man because He doesn't even keep the Sabbath (which He seems to have broken, again, by having compassion on someone). 

Then others start asking, rightfully so, "But could a sinner do these miracles?" 

Could a sinner give sight to the blind? Could a sinner make the lame walk? Could a sinner heal a bleeding woman? Could a sinner cleanse the unclean? Could a sinner cast out demons? 

Say what you want to about the Guy, but there's no denying that the craziest, most dangerous man in the entire region is sitting "clothed and in his right mind" at the feet of Jesus. 

Could a sinner do that? 

Still today, we are debating such a thing. Still today, we are trying to figure out how Jesus would truly respond to the events of our times - we are declaring that one way is His way and might be righteous, and we're arguing over whether another way might not be. We're trying to figure out what the "image" of God is supposed to be and cultivate that...for "likes," of course. For a little bit more, maybe. For the same reasons as the Pharisees, probably. 

But God still doesn't care. He does the right thing and the righteous thing, the compassionate and merciful thing, the beautiful and holy thing, the unquestionably loving thing. 

And if we think that scandalous, if we think that unclean, if we think that backward, if we think, then, that He must be a sinner to do such a thing as this, well, then...we wouldn't be the first ones. 

But it won't stop Him from doing it. 

God's Confidence

One of the things that I love about Jesus is what I will loosely describe as His confidence, although it's something quite more than that. 

Over and over again during His ministry, He runs up against folks who have other plans for Him. They want Him to be a political revolutionary. They want Him to stop teaching or healing. They want to capture Him and do...whatever they want to do to Him. They want to keep children from coming to Him. They want to silence blind men crying out from the side of the road. 

And Jesus, calmly and coolly and totally collected, just says, "Nah. That's not the plan." 

There was even a time when they were trying to capture Him and He just slipped quietly through the crowd and walked away. Like "Nope. Not today. That's not the plan." 

In John 7, they are really trying to capture Him. There's all kinds of hubbub over who He is, whether He's the Messiah, what the crowds are saying about Him, how much trouble He's causing for the Pharisees by being greater than them - more loving, more generous, more forgiving, more gracious. For making God accessible to the people again. For going against the "custom" in favor of something greater. 

So they send the Temple guards to arrest Him, and He looks them right in the face and says, "Yes, I'm here, but I won't always be here, and when you look for me, you won't find me." 

And they don't arrest Him. 

Because how do you arrest a man who is standing right in front of you telling you that you can't find Him?

Brothers, it is not the time. 

Listen, they could have reached right out and touched Him. They could have put their hands on Him right there. They could probably smell the remnants of the fish He had for lunch on His breath. And yet, He just stands in front of them without any fear at all and says, "Now is not the time for that. That's not the plan." 

And then He just walks away. 

This is truly the greatness of God - to be able to set the time for things and to not get distracted by what men think. To not be troubled by what the world is trying to do. To not worry about what looks like a plan falling apart because He knows, without a doubt, that's not the plan. 

The plan is the plan is the plan and it's not changing, as men change, for God does not change His mind. 

To be honest, I'd love to have that kind of confidence. 

But I'll settle for a God who is just that great. 

God of One

If you have ever wondered whether God truly knows you, you need look no further than the Gospels to discover a resounding "yes!" 

As Jesus traveled through the region, teaching and preaching and healing, He was often pressed by the crowds. He was often surrounded by masses of persons. The disciples often commented that He didn't have time for them or He couldn't possibly have noticed them, as they did when they told the blind men to stop screaming from the sides of the roads and as they chastised Him for saying something so silly as "someone touched Me." He knew. They didn't. 

Jesus not only saw, but stopped for, every blind man. Every deaf man. Every lame man. Every child possessed by a demon. A bleeding woman (who should have been unclean, by the way). He recognized a man who had climbed a tree just to get a better look and called out to that man by name before anyone in the crowd even really noticed him. Jesus spent His ministry engaging the one. 

Perhaps the greatest example of this, though, comes in John 5. 

There is a man who has been waiting by a pool of healing waters for a very long time, but he never seems to get to the waters fast enough. Jesus comes by, sees the man, starts a conversation, and heals him. Then, John tells us, Jesus disappears into the crowd before the man even has a chance to thank Him. Jesus has again stopped for the one. 

But it doesn't end there. 

Later, we are told, Jesus saw this man in the temple and strikes up another conversation. You look well. See how much better you are now? Live into this. 

Jesus, who stopped in the middle of a crowd to heal a man the world had looked past for far too long, sees that man again later in the temple, recognizes him, and stops to talk again. 

He didn't just heal a man; He knew the man He had healed. He could pick him out of the masses. He could see him in all the places where he was "just" a face, just a number, where the world was still looking right past him. 

He does the same for us. 

Isn't it so cool for you to know that Jesus can pick you out of a crowd? That when He sees you across a room, He recognizes you? That He knows your story together, what He's done for you, how you believed in Him, without even having to think about it? 

Our Lord is the Lord of All, but He is also the God of One. Of you. Of me.

That's so cool.