how do you do it?

I spend a large part of my week connecting with various people inside and outside of my church. The one theme I keep running into is how maxed out so many of our lives are. 

How do you do it?

Whatever your role in life, you likely spent the last week doing one or more of the following:

• Public Speaker: you had one or more situations where whatever you said was before an audience expecting you to say just the right thing in just the right way
• Font of Wisdom: you were expected to know the answers… backward and forward... so someone feeling backward could go forward
• Visionary: you felt the burden of keeping a keen eye on circumstances, culture and the horizon so you could tell others
• Therapist: you listened to others share their problems, and you did this with actual empathy
• Writer/Editor: you felt burdened to say something, yet wondered if you should - and if you should say it, how you should say it
• Evangelist: you remembered Jesus' command to reach new people for Him and took a step to do so
• Trainer: you shared your experience with others who were eager to learn
• Disciplinarian: you confronted something/someone needing it in order to make things better
• Iron Chef: you took whatever was in your cupboard and made a masterpiece out of it - even though not everyone else thought so
• Cheerleader: you became someone's biggest fan, even if it meant looking foolish
• Doctor: you tended to the wound of another person, be it a physical need or something intangible
• Public Relations: you engaged the community at large somehow for something you believe in, be it personally or on social media
• Prayer Warrior: you unleashed your heart to God and invited Him to unleash His heart into you
• CEO: you hustled for the sake of "many" and yet stepped up so that the buck could stop with someone - "you"
• Fundraiser: you looked at the numbers on hand so they could be best managed and multiplied
• Special Events Coordinator: you managed a schedule for others so they could be appropriately be challenged, entertained and kept busy
• Chauffeur: you got everyone where they needed to be while driving between the lines
• Diplomat: you helped navigate change with the right words so people would keep the right focus
• Janitor: you did the ugly work so people would have a clean perspective
• Actor: you somehow pulled all of this off, not losing i

I can only imagine the thought of doing it all once, let alone again, is enough to send any of us under our covers not wanting to get out of bed.

How do you do it?

"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." (Colossians 3:17)

it's okay to not be okay

It's okay to not be okay.

This world. Your life.

It's okay to not be okay with it all.

We put great hope in the idea of life getting better. We turn to politicians, teachers, doctors, employers and others who have authority to fix things for us. We likewise can have a skewed perspective of God that we keep holding out hope for - one where He makes life go exactly as we want it to, sparing us from pain and rewarding us for our good deeds.

That would be "okay" - wouldn't it?

Perhaps that's why are that much more disappointed when things don't happen as we'd like or those we turn to don't accomplish what we hoped they would.

If you're nodding along with this, so am I.

I find that the pain I feel when my expectations are not met reveals so much about me, even though I would rather focus on the one(s) who seemingly let me down. It's why I take great comfort in something from the Apostle Paul:

I, Paul, am under God’s plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful believers in Ephesus. I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ. 

How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth. 

It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what’s coming, a reminder that we’ll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.

It may help to know that while Paul was divinely inspired by God to write this letter, he actually wrote it while in prison. He had been bullied and abused for his faith, just as he used to bully and abuse others before becoming a Christian himself. Still, Paul proclaimed with great conviction the truth about who he was in Christ.

There's a great truth here: Despite his circumstances, his identity as a beloved child of God remained unshaken.

Which means... because of Jesus, the reality of us being beloved sons and daughters is greater than our circumstances. When we live in that identity, every other area of our lives can thrive. We don't have to be "okay" with what is happening to us, for what is happening in us can be even deeper than that.

I know how freeing that can sound, and yet I also know how complex it can simultaneously sound. Sometimes when life is loud and we are enduring one hit after another even Truth can sound like a lie.

Be aware of that. Claim that challenge out loud. Truth remains Truth. Hope remains Hope. God remains God. Your Savior remains your Savior.

You're not alone in struggling with this. It's why I want you to know church is a place where it’s okay to not be okay... where you can be accepted as you are, experience radical grace, and heal from your past hurts... not because we're able to fix your life with a spiritual buzz or high-five church experiences every week, but because we are genuinely under our genuine God who has created a genuine realm -

a realm called Heaven that we can one day enter into where there will be no more tears, no more pain, and no more sorrow,

and a realm called Earth where His Kingdom can come, and His will be done here just as it is in heaven. 

note the quotes

No one is a lost cause. 

"Dirty people" provide good soil because there is a lot of fertilizer in their life... for the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.

"Clean people" provide the inspiration to live life as a marathon and not just a sprint... for we should not grow weary in doing good.

But note the quotes.

No one, except by rejecting Jesus, can be permanently labeled as dirty. Christ absorbed your sins and your hell into Himself to take your place.

No one, except by receiving Jesus, can be permanently labeled as clean. Integrity is only truly transformational when you are viscerally aware of your need for God.

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin... or all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:21, 23-24)

perspective

It's okay. It really is okay.

You're living in a Larger Story than that "thing" that's dangling out there, trying to bait you into another person's insecurities or something you weren't made for.

Don't attend every argument you're invited into or left breadcrumbs to follow. Instead, be still... know that God is God... and join Him in proactively forming Life however you can, reconciling whatever you can at all times. Question your feelings, for they are often misleading and beyond understanding. Instead, do what's right... even if it isn't popular or easy.

(felt like someone needed to hear this today)

confessions of a pastor - pt 4: my sifting (a.k.a. 3 years + 3 minutes = 3000)

Here's the math: 3 years + 3 minutes = 3000.

I'll explain that in a moment.

First, a confession... I have a messy work history.

This wasn’t something I planned on, and I actually had an incredible experience in my first leadership role. I became a Christian in one of the greatest student ministries in the country, eventually taking on an internship after graduation. This “leadership lab” helped me understand the calling God placed on my life, but it also became both a pillar and a hindrance to the ministry that followed.

Sometimes after a great experience you expect that everything that follows will be equally as great.

Not everyone understands how professional ministry roles work, but the bottom line is that every Christian is called to be a minister. The role of a pastor is designed by God to "prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up." (Ephesians 4:12). People in full-time professional ministry often have a unique journey that leads them to understand this calling - for me it was a mountaintop experience, and I mean that quite literally. That's another story for another time, though.

I only mention the calling because it is often what keeps you sane when life gets insane.

I've certainly had such moments, including a defining time when I was pushed out of a role in a church by a pastor who felt success was measured differently than I did. I disagree with his thoughts even to this day, but the bottom line is that God called me to that church and I couldn't leave because it became inconvenient.

After all, following Jesus means following Jesus.

What began was a process that included me being professionally humbled and crucified in that context, then later having to sell my house and move my family in with my in-laws, eventually taking another hill to plant a church (that was squelched by denominational politics), and finally to a place of busyness where I worked four jobs just to stay afloat.

I got angry with God. I grew jaded toward the church. I wrote blog posts as therapy.

That season of life lasted three years.

Then it happened – my heart began to weep over the larger Story versus merely my own. Every pretense I had about God, others, and myself was stripped away. As this unfolded, I began to see the kind of faith Jesus had in the Church, and if He had that kind of faith in us how could I not do the same?

I stopped asking the question, "What's next, God?" or "When will you put me somewhere useful?" Instead, I began to offer myself to Him each day and inquire, "Show me who to love today, God" and "Let me be useful wherever you put me." Along the way, it seems, I became such a tool in His hands.

Perhaps that's why I was given three minutes this past weekend.

I shared this story to a group of youth workers at the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, many of whom I guess needed to hear it. While I actually spoke for more than five minutes (thanks to the permission and generosity of the team who put it together), I aimed for the three minutes I was given to sum up the thought as best as I can - we are called to carry our cross, even when you get shin splints on the climb up Calvary and know the taste of blood in your mouth from biting your tongue to honor God.

Not counting those watching online, the conference was for 3,000 attendees.

None of the math sunk in until my wife brilliantly summed it up for me.

3 years + 3 minutes = 3000.

At least, that was the case for me. Perhaps your math will play out differently.

Speaking of the stage, that may have been a once-in-a-lifetime window for me... and while I didn't crave it, I celebrated the window it gave me to share some hindsight that could help another person's foresight.

Then again, who needs a stage when you have the next person in front of you?


I don't know what you're enduring these days, but I know this - your history will define you or refine you... and the difference is whether you self-righteously hold onto the story of what happened to you, or release it into the One whose Story we get to take part in.

"And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:27)