Speak Up

Have you ever had an idea that was totally great in your mind, but then when you actually verbalized it out loud you realized it was completely dumb?  I was once in a creative team meeting to talk about interesting ways to illustrate the affects of anger in our lives.  We were focusing on the idea of a grill - how it's hot and burns all the time, how it's heat can either be used to cook a delicious burger or burn your face off.  I was trying to bridge the gap between the negative impact of our anger and the flames on a grill.

"I think I have it," I said to the pastor at the time.  "We have this grill that's got flames shooting up, and we can get video of you talking about how our anger is like flames that burn people, damaging our relationships with others.  Then you can talk about how our anger can also burn up our relationship with God, and when you say that you can burn a Bible on the grill to drive the point home.  Our anger is literally like burning the Bible in our lives!"

My pastor paused, tilted his head, looked at me with a puzzled expression and said.  "We can't burn a Bible."

In my mind, it was the best idea in the world.  Burn a Bible to show people how destructive their anger is to their relationship with God.  What I missed was the obvious fact that it's not good practice for the pastor of a church to burn Bibles, and especially not to document the act on film.  In my mind it was brilliant.  Once it passed my lips it was immediately evident what a stupid idea it was.

Our minds can be a cluttered mess of ideas, anxieties, memories, to-do lists and useless trivia.  Very rarely does a person have complete clarity in their thought processes because our brains can move so fast and process so much information.  It is estimated that the human brain can handle 10 quadrillion instructions per second.  That is massive amount of data flowing through the millions of cells in our heads, and sorting through them is not always easy, which is why it is difficult to always have a clear head.

For me this fact is played out best when I pray in my head.  You know, those silent prayers that we offer up to God...the ones where you are halfway through asking God to move on behalf of your sick aunt before you realize you are going through your grocery list.  The prayers where you are telling God how much you love him in your head only to realize a few minutes later that you are mentally reciting the lyrics to that Selena Gomez song you heard on the radio earlier.  Silent prayers are okay in a pinch, but they rarely keep me connected.  It's no surprise to find out that there are only two real mentions of silent prayer in the Bible (1 Samuel 1:13 and Nehemiah 2:4-5).  Those were both powerful prayers, but I think it's important to realize that they appear to be the exception rather than the rule.  Prayer in the Bible is typically understood to be out loud.

He said to them, “When you pray, say…Luke 11:2

The disciples have just asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, and he begins teaching them the Lord's Prayer with this statement, "When you pray, say..."  Say it.  Say it out loud.  Speak it.  Not when you pray, think to yourself, but say it out loud.  It's amazing how much this principle has changed my prayer life.  When I talk to God as if he is a person in the room rather than the imaginary friend in my mind, I am much more deliberate about what I'm saying.  My prayers go from being loose and free-flow, guided by whatever is going on in my mind (shopping lists, what I need to record on my DVR, does my hair look good, what if bigfoot really is real?), to thoughtful and rooted in my relationship with God.

The tongue has the power of life and death...Proverbs 18:21

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that there is power in the words we use.  Raise your hand if you have never hurt anyone's feelings by saying something stupid...no one should have their hand down right now.  Now, raise your hand if you can remember something kind, encouraging or challenging that someone has said to you...you should be tired of raising your hands at this point, because words have power!  They do not just fall to the ground.

And I tell you this, you must give an account on judgment day for every idle word you speak. 37 The words you say will either acquit you or condemn you.
Matthew 12:36-37

For some of us it's scary to pray out loud.  We are afraid we will look or sound stupid and worry that we will run out of things to say. The way that I love it when my kids talk to me is the same way God loves it when we talk to him.  More often than not, my kids talk about bodily functions in weird voices, but I'm cool with it because I love them, and I love hearing their sweet little voices.  God loves hearing your voice.  He loves it because he loves you!  Nothing you have to say is unimportant to him, and there's no way you could say anything in a way that sounds dumb to his ears.  The next time you pray, find a quite place all by yourself and say it.  It has the power to change your life.

Snoopy's Million Dollar Business Plan

Today I received two receipts from the iTunes store.  I nearly choked when I opened them and realized that one of my children had made $247 worth of purchases in the Snoopy's Street Fair app by a developer called Beeline.  The first thought was, "This is going to kill us."  My second thought was, "This is going to make a really funny story."  My third thought was, "I need to find a defibrillator quickly because Terri is going to have a heart attack, and someone's going to need to resuscitate her."  No joke, she was beet red when I told her and looked as faint as a civil war era debutante on a hot day.

The breakdown of purchases blew my mind:  one Snoopy Dollar Money Clip ($4.99), one Snoopy Dollar Money bag ($24.99), and two Snoopy Dollar Trunks ($99.99 each).  My first thought was, "People spend real money to buy fake money to buy virtual visits to Lucy's psychiatric booth?"  My second thought was, "What kind of kids app would allow you to buy something in-app for $99?!?"  My third thought was, "Has Snoopy written a book on business, because I need to read that junk if he's pulling down that type of cash from children under 10?"

I sat down across from the kids and explained what had happened, convinced that Calvin (age 6) was the offender since he is 4he most infatuated with video games.  I explained how I opened up the receipt email. I described how much money the in-app purchases cost.  I listed off all the things that we could have bought with that money:  a new iPod touch, an Xbox Kinect, two hundred other much more fun apps that only cost $.99 each.  As I really pounded this home to make my point, a funny thing happened.  Calvin held on to his semi-cheerful expression, as if what I was saying was all new to him.  But Trinity (age 7)...Trinity's face began to drop as her mouth turned down into a deep frown.  Her eyes got big and glassy.  She looked up at me and said, "If say I did it will you promise not to be mad at me?"

"I won't be mad at you," I said.

She cracked and folded into that pinched up cry-face and said, "It was me!!!"  Then she immediately broke down in tears.  My first thought was, "This is too cute, but don't smile because it will hurt her feelings even more."  My second thought was, "I need to make sure she doesn't feel like I am angry with her for something she didn't do on purpose."  My third thought was, "Two hundred dollars might be a small price to pay for the opportunity to hold my little girl in my lap and comfort her like this."

But I'm still working on my refund...

Jesus Has a Mohawk

Recently, a bunch of teenagers at a punk rock concert in Indonesia were picked up by police and taken to a detention center 30 miles outside of town.  These kids must have been doing some crazy stuff, right?  Drugs?  Fight club?  Looting?  Satanic rituals?  Watching any of the Twilight franchise movies?  No, none of that.  They were detained and shipped out to a week long prison retreat because they looked different.  No joke!  The police picked up these kids because of their body piercings, crazy hair and unconventional clothes.  Once they arrived at the detention center, police began buzzing off their spiky mohawks and stripping away their body piercings.  Why, you may ask?  Because of a perceived threat to Islamic values.

Okay, let's stop and make sure everyone is clear on this:  65 teenagers were arrested and driven 30 miles to a prison camp where they were stripped, had their heads shaved, had all their piercings, dog collar necklaces and chains forcibly removed and were thrown into pools of water for "spiritual cleansing."  And all of this was because of a perceived threat to Islamic values.  No laws were broken.  No crimes were committed.  Police were afraid of what the individuality of these kids might mean to their religious structures.

My very honest reaction to reading about this is to feel sick on numerous levels, but mostly because these attitudes prevail here in the United States as well.  For that matter, these attitudes exist in the church too.  We don't do well with "different".  When a dog-collared, mohawked teenager with piercings in his ears that are as big and empty as the hole in a Krispy Kreme donut walks through the doors of our churches, what kind of reception do you think he or she can expect?  Fear: "Is this kid going to pull out a gun and murder me?"  Disgust:  "I bet those huge piercings are really stinky."  Anxiety:  "Please don't sit by me, please don't sit by me!"  Confusion: "I have no idea what to say to that dude."  Anger:  "This kid is going to make my kids want tattoos!"

Our response is rarely as vile as that of the Indonesian police, but can be just as indefensible.  We double down on our unwritten codes of acceptable church behavior and dress.  We very subtly communicate to this person that the more they change to be like us, the more we will accept them.  With our avoidance, we delicately send them off to the detention center that is the lonely corner of the church lobby because the perceived threat they represent to our Christian values is just too great.

Jesus wasn't a perceived threat to the religious values and leadership of his day.  He was a very real and active threat.  His teachings contradicted the rigid religious caste system that had developed in Judaism to exclude those who were poor, sick or born with the wrong pedigree. His miracles gave credibility to his dangerous ideas.  His very presence was that of a dangerous punk rocker who is threatening to upset the apple cart.  What's more punk rock than going into the Jewish temple and tossing over the tables of merchants and payday lenders who were taking advantage of religious people for their own personal profit?  If the religious leaders in Jesus' era could have shut him down by shaving his head, they would have done it in a heartbeat.

Jesus' followers were poor, uneducated, sinful, disgraced and dangerous.  They lived at the outer edges of religious society because they had nothing to contribute.  They were nobodies.  But Jesus was drawn to them.  He saw so much more in them.  Jesus sees in people the potential not to destroy religion, but to know and be loved by God.  He sees in us the seeds of greatness, whether our hair is green, our skin is tattooed or we have so many piercings we leak like a sieve.

Be like Jesus.  Love people who seem dangerous and unlovable.  Welcome in those who are different without expecting them to change to be included.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world.  For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home.  I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’  “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing?  When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’  “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’
Matthew 25:34-40

Let's be the church that welcomes people in with love, rather than forcibly shaves of their unacceptable hairstyles.  Because the next time you see Jesus, he may have a mohawk.

Sex Trafficking and the Church

Everybody has one or two things that really get to them.  They are the things that grab your heart and don't let go, wringing it out until nothing but anger, sorrow and determination are left.  For some people it is poverty or human rights.  Many people are deeply moved by inequality, whether it is based on race, religion, gender or any other number or qualifiers.  We can all agree that these things are horrible and need to be addressed, but there is always that one thing that really cuts us deep.  For me that thing is sex trafficking.

I have talked about it before in this blog, but when it comes up I can't be still and not pour out the indignation, frustration, anger and helplessness it makes me feel.  There are women and children in our world and in our nation who are being imprisoned into a life of sexual slavery.  They are drugged, repeatedly raped and intimidated into submission before they are sold over and over again to satisfy some of man's darkest urges.  It makes me sick, and it makes me sad when I read articles with statistics like this:

Over the last several years, the U.S. State Department has estimated that traffickers in other countries are selling 17,000 to 18,000 women and children a year and bringing them into the United States for sexual exploitation.  In addition, another report estimates that 100,000 American juveniles (with estimates as high as 300,000) a year are being trafficked annually within our nation for the purposes of sexual exploitation. These numbers are staggering indicators of the number of lives of women and children being destroyed daily by sexual slavery within the United States. They also reveal another sobering reality: There are staggering numbers of men in America who are creating the demand for these sexual services. 

How can this happen in the United States right under our noses?  How can we hear numbers like that and do nothing?  We, the church, must rise up to this challenge.  We must break new ground in helping the victims of these crimes, but the problem is that we don't know how.  We don't know where this is happening in our community.  We don't know the victims or how to reach them.  The church must wake up to this and begin showing the love of God in tangible ways.  But how?

I want to challenge you to read this article and begin asking yourself, "How would God have me help these women and children?"  Ask God to show you how you can be a part of crushing this darkness that exists under the surface of our society, and please share your ideas.  We can all do something...

http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/201201/201201_088_sextraffic.cfm

Defenseless

I have been hurt in the past. I have put my faith in a person only to be devastatingly hurt by them. I have seen my children uprooted, losing friends and the their stability in life because of the hurtful choices of people who held the care of my family in their hands; and for reasons that cannot stand up under scrutiny. I have been wronged. I have had lies and half-truths told about me to protect the tellers from the consequences of their actions. I have been hurt badly…and so have you. We all have. Every single one of us can point to scars on our hearts that have been knit together over the wounds caused by people in our lives in whom we placed our trust.

 In many ways those hurts can define us. They can lift us to greater success by driving us to overcome or can grind us into a life of unending bitterness and mistrust. We can push them away as if they never happened or call them fresh to our mind every day, as new now as the moment they first happened. For good or bad, our hurts have the power to change us and those around us by how we respond to them.

“But to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also. If someone demands your coat, offer your shirt also. Give to anyone who asks; and when things are taken away from you, don’t try to get them back. Do to others as you would like them to do to you. “If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them! And if you do good only to those who do good to you, why should you get credit? Even sinners do that much! And if you lend money only to those who can repay you, why should you get credit? Even sinners will lend to other sinners for a full return.


“Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked. You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate. 
Luke 6:27-36

In one teaching Jesus shows us two things. First, people will hurt us. It’s going to happen. It’s not a matter of if, but when. This is a non-negotiable principle of life that Jesus is acknowledging, but he also shows us how to deal with those hurts: offer the other cheek also. In a crazy twist on the human sense of justice, Jesus doesn’t tell us that we should get payback any way we can.  He tells us to double down and make ourselves even more vulnerable. Why would he do that? What do we gain by being walking punching bags?

First, we have to always remember that people are not our enemies. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says that, “We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God.” If we allow our hurts to make other people our enemies, we are missing the mission and the heartbeat of God. We don’t use our weapons for revenge, but to wipe out everything that would keep the people who hurt us from God. Isn’t that what Jesus did? Even as he was being beaten, whipped, humiliated and killed by mankind he was fighting back. He wasn’t throwing punches at his aggressors, the people who were causing him pain, but at the sin that was keeping them from knowing God’s love. He was fighting for us even as we were fighting against him. And that’s how he expects us to live.

The beauty of it all is that when we live defenselessly, we are the ones who are blessed. Our vulnerability becomes our very strength and God will use it to begin knitting together the strongest relationships we could ever know, relationships that model Jesus’ relationship with us; the kind where we are submitted to the needs of others first. If you are a person who has carried the massive weight of bitterness, resentment and unforgiveness for a long time then you know how wounded your relationships with others are. I know the fear of putting your trust in another person again. I know what it's like to still feel the sting of the last slap to your face.  But when you make yourself defenseless, God becomes your defender. You are not putting your faith in the person who let you down, but in the God who guarantees that a defenseless life is a good life.

Each of us has been hurt by someone, whether great or small. Will those hurts seep deep into your heart, poisoning your ability to trust others and know real community? Or will those hurts cause you to lay down your armor like Jesus did, making yourself defenseless to those who are not really your true enemies anyway? God is calling us to live a life that is defenseless, in the only way that true unity and community can grow. It’s his plan of mutual submission. Are you willing to turn and offer your other cheek to the person who just slapped you, knowing that it could lead to the truest community, deepest relationships and greatest freedom you have ever known?  I am.

Echo the Buffalo

This morning at 4:00 am, my dog Echo barked one time.  I groggily woke up and told myself it was just part of whatever dream I was having.  At 4:06 she barked again, and again I convinced myself that my dreamland must be full of barking dogs (although anyone who knows me at all could tell you that would be more of a nightmare for me - barking dogs, shedding hair, licking you and putting cold wet noses on you...gross).  I pulled a pillow back over my head and tried to pretend it was all just a dream.  At 4:16 she barked a third time.  This time I knew it wasn't in my head and that I was going to have to get out of bed into the chilly, winter morning air and let her outside.

I rolled the blanket back and walked out to her kennel with my eyes half closed, because everybody knows that if you squint while you get up to do something in the middle of the night it is easier to go back to sleep when you climb back into bed...right?  She went outside and did her business.  I called her back in and made the executive decision to just leave her out of her cage since it was almost morning anyway (yes, almost morning - all of you who get up at at four or five every day just need to face the fact that it is still night!).  With my half-closed eyes, I stumbled back into the warmth of my bed.

On the edge of sleep, I hear a loud noise.  It is the noise a person makes when they stumble at the top of the stairs and spastically roll all the way down to the bottom.  That deep collection of thumping booms that is made by flailing arms and legs as they flop and roll down wooden steps is very distinct, and that's the noise my dog Echo was making while she excitedly ran up and down the steps.  It was the sound of a herd of buffalo running through my house.  It happened once and I thought, "Okay, she's where she wants to be now and it won't happen again."  It happened twice and I thought, "Maybe she left something that she needed upstairs and just went to get it. " It happened three times and I thought, "I'm going to tie her feet together so she can never run again (I can be grumpy when I am awakened early in the morning)!"

With eyes half closed, careful to keep in whatever sleep still remained in there, I got up and put her back in her kennel.  As I drifted back to sleep, I think I dreamed of hunting buffalo...

Stop Doing Things

I was a Junior in high school. The tests were handed out by the teacher and placed face down on our desks. I waited for the signal to start because, being very competitive by nature, I wanted to be the first one to finish and turn it in (I also liked to finish early because I could spend the rest of the hour reading whatever book I couldn’t put down at the time).

“You may start the test.” The command was given and I was off, tearing through question after question on the two-page questionnaire. But something strange happened while I scribbled and wrote…people started getting up to turn in their tests before me. At first it was the kids I would expect to beat me, the ones who actually cared more about their grades than just winning a race, but soon other students were taking their quizzes up too. And they were NOT smarter than me! Something was way off, so I doubled down and raced through the questions even faster to just not be last.

When I filled in my last blank, I scratched my name across the top of the sheet and rushed it up to the teacher’s desk. I wasn’t last, but as I walked back to my seat I saw the strange smiles on the faces of the students who had beaten me. They were giggling and looking very self-satisfied. I sat down a little confused. When the last student turned in their test, our teacher got up and addressed the class. “Those of you who completed all the test questions will be graded on how many you got right. Those of you who followed the instructions at the top of the page to just write your name on the test and turn it in will get 100%.”

There it was in black in white at the very top of the test: Write your name on this test and turn it in without answering any of the questions.

If I had bothered to take the time to read the instructions instead of just forging blindly ahead, I would have gotten a perfect score and still probably been the first one finished. Instead, I jumped right into it, thinking that the directions were pointless because I knew the right way to do it. That is a character defect that I struggle with to this day, I want to just go and do something…anything! I don’t want to have meeting after meeting, plotting and planning, devising and scheming. I just want to know the general direction I need to head toward so I can start sprinting there.

Jesus understood this passion to do something. The Bible describes Jesus in Matthew chapter 9 as travelling through all the villages and towns in the area, healing people wherever he went. It then gives us insight into his motivation when it says:

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:36

If I were Jesus, moved with compassion by the lostness he saw in people at this moment, I would start doing things. Healing people, giving them money, offering good advice, telling my disciples to get out there and help for pete’s sake. But Jesus doesn’t tell his disciples to go get busy. He tells them to do something else entirely.

He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.”
Matthew 9:37-38

Jesus tells us the best thing we can do if we want to help people who are lost – pray. He didn’t tell his disciples that they ARE the workers and should go out there and get busy. He didn’t give them a strategy for how to help the people they had pity for. He told them to pray for God to send more workers.

We are working on the beginning of an exciting new opportunity at First Assembly. There are a lot of things that need to be done to make it happen. There are a lot of jobs to be done and spots that need to be filled. It is in my nature to want to make a checklist and start scratching off the things that I have taken care of, but I am reminded that it’s not about what I can do. It’s about what God can do. He is the one in charge of the harvest, not me. So I will stop, take a deep breath and ask him to send the workers he needs in order to help those who are lost without any idea of where to go for help. Jesus thought praying for workers was important enough to specifically tell us to do it. Will you be a doer or a prayer?

More Christmas for Your Money

We were shopping at Wal-Mart the other day, and they had a giant sign that said, "More Christmas for Your Money." I'm not sure how that even works. For my dollar value, will Wal-Mart give me the thirteen days of Christmas when Target will only give me the twelve? Can I get more baby Jesus for my buck this year than last year? Will I look back that the Christmas of aught-twelve as the biggest Christmas ever when I'm rocking in a chair, remembering the days of my youth to my great grandchildren?

I love Christmas shopping, but don't even get me started on Black Friday. Terri went out at midnight on the morning of Black Friday and said there was blood on the floor at Wal-Mart in the section where people could get a huge discount on a Wii. Someone was willing to bleed to save fifty bucks on a Wii!! Personally, I would pay someone fifty bucks to let me stay home on Black Friday and avoid the insanity that inevitably ensues. Besides, how many $2 waffle makers can one family use?

I stumbled across this shopping video that some guys made on Black Friday that seemed to make it all worthwhile. Enjoy!