Category: Life

Stay.

I love basketball. For as long as I can remember, it’s been a part of my life somehow; my dad is a coach, all three of my sisters and myself have played on school teams as well as others, I even had a tiny little basketball goal in my room when I was like, I don’t know, maybe four or five years old. I’ve been around it forever.

I would say the height of my basketball career would have to be when I was a middle schooler, specifically my 6th-8th grade years. I have lots of highlight stories that would make 14-year-old Michael Jordan shake in his Chuck Taylors.

One time, we found ourselves in a break during a drill, and our coach used that pause to reiterate the proper form for catching the ball: one hand behind and one to the side, to stop the ball from hitting you and to support it from falling out of your other hand. To prove his point, he threw it directly to me and I flung my hands up as quickly as I could but I wasn’t paying attention at all and the ball slid right through my hands and smacked me in the middle of the face, knocking me to the ground in about 0.2 seconds flat. I was fine, but I was still a little shaken up.

Another time on the road, in a 6th-grade game we had agreed to play quickly before the JV and Varsity games, I was put in with about 2 minutes to go. I don’t remember the score, but my teammate passed me the ball as I was standing a few feet inside the 3-point line. There were no defenders close enough to scare me from shooting, so I pulled up and chunked the weakest airball the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic School gymnasium had ever seen. It was a flop from the second it left my hand. Needless to say, they didn’t really pass me the ball after that.

Those are just a couple of the ridiculous antics I pulled on the basketball court in junior high, and the entire time I played from 6th to 8th grade, I kind of earned a name for myself for being a player that absolutely stunk. There was a constant in all of these mistakes, though, that I didn’t see until years later; I would always play pretty decently until I made one mistake. After that, it was downhill for the rest of the night. If I messed up once, I would become terrified that it would happen again, and again, and again, and again. I would get so focused on messing up that I would end up doing exactly what I was trying to avoid.

I think, a lot of the time, we respond to our sin the same way. I know I do.

Tell me if you relate: you know that Jesus loves you, that He died for you, and that His resurrection made it possible for a relationship with Him. You’ve accepted that, and received salvation as a result. Days, weeks, months, maybe years have gone by and you’ve done such a good job of fighting temptation and making war against sin but after all this time your eyes wander and you catch yourself thinking lustful thoughts again. The intensity of the shame and regret that follows almost immediately is overwhelming. How could you do that? Why is your heart running back to that place? You’re still so broken, you feel. Jesus is mad at me, you think, I’m gonna have to work hard and dig myself out of this pit. You emerge with such a fear of failing again that within a day, you’ve intentionally sought out ways to fulfill those lustful thoughts, whether it’s through your internet activity or just your thoughts, or somewhere in-between. And then you do it again. And again. And again. And suddenly you find yourself right back into the patterns you’ve fought so hard against for so long.

The fight against sin is no easy one. The longer you spend entertaining sin like it’s not a cheap imitation of the real joy found in Jesus, the more you train your body to respond to sin and not to Jesus.

Former Navy Seal and NFL player Clint Bruce said it best: “You might have heard it said that when tough times come, you’ll rise to the occasion, but the Seals know better. They tell you, ‘Forget that. It’s a lie. You’ll never rise to the occasion–you will always sink to the level of your training.'” It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that we still sin even though we’ve trusted Jesus is our Savior. We’ve been conditioning ourselves this way. It’s simple.

Let me put it another way. Todd Wagner told this story to me, and I can’t get over it. Imagine your neighbor has a dog, and all day long he abuses it, beats it, and starves it. Never once has he treated this dog with love and care, and he’s had it for years. Its chest is sunken in, its bones are way too visible, and there are scars, both closed and open, all over its body. One day, you decide you’re going to buy that dog, whatever it takes, because you can’t stand to see it abused any longer. So you go to your neighbor and he says that he’ll sell it to you, but only at the right price.

“So what is the right price?” you ask.

“A hundred billion dollars,” he replies, with a sheepish grin because he knows you won’t pay that for a dog. It’s not even close to thinking about being worth that much.

With a strong, determined, and resolute face, you look him in the eye and confidently tell him, “I’ll take it.” And you pay the man a hundred billion dollars.

Now the dog is yours, but it’s not trained to listen to you. That’ll take some time. Every day, you play with it in the front yard, giving it bones galore and washing it, applying medicine that might hurt now but will ultimately bring intense healing, and feeding it steaks the size of its own head. It literally couldn’t imagine a better life. But you live across the street from the old master still. That hasn’t changed. Every day, that old master, because he’s so twisted and so terrible, whistles for that dog and tries to coax it back into the street because he knows there’s a truck coming and man, wouldn’t it be fun to see the dog get hit by the truck?

Everything within that dog is going to want to run across the street toward its master, especially at the beginning of its new relationship with you, because it hasn’t spent much time hearing your voice and learning how much you really do care. But you’re always there, grabbing its face and turning it to you. “Listen to me,” you say, “he is no longer your master. He has no power over you. I have life more abundantly for you, so stay with me. He is trying to give you a cheap imitation. It is not the real thing. I am. Stay.”

Don’t get me wrong: if you keep getting hit by cars, it looks like you have no new master. How you live matters. But how stupid is it to think that when I do choose a moment to run after my old master and I get hit by a car that my new Master will sit there and scold me and remind me of my idiot decision to listen to that terrible one? Scripture speaks of no such thing. Instead, it proclaims in abundance a loving Father, who has nothing but forgiveness and grace to offer. That debt is already paid. You have nothing to do but sit in His love and forgiveness.

Bob Goff said it best: “These days, the view of God I hold onto isn’t Him being mad because I’ve missed the mark. It’s the one of Him seen through a bloody eye [after I accidentally let the shotgun go off inside the house], scooping me into His arms, getting blood all over His shirt, and carrying me away to get healed.”

“The Lord has removed your punishment; He has turned back your enemy. The King of Israel, Yahweh, is among you; you need no longer fear harm.”

–Zephaniah 3:14-17

My punishment is gone. Jesus took it. He paid all of it. So why am I wasting all my time wallowing in self-pity? There’s no reason why I should be. I could be using that time to be in Jesus and in His presence, reiterating His promises of love and grace and forgiveness over me.

How will I respond when I mess up? How will my reaction be when I sin? I pray that it would be to throw myself on Jesus, to be open and honest when someone asks, to confess my sins clearly, but to move on in love and grace.

I’ve messed up in life. I’m not fooling anybody acting like I haven’t. My flesh is relentless; satan is, too. There is a war raging between the man I used to be and the man I know He is making me to be. And when I say war, I mean it; knock-down, drag out, total annihilation. But what is so crazy stinking awesome is that I have victory in Christ anyway–He has defeated death–sin’s ultimate weapon is already a loser.

Jesus is better.

When my heart is broken by sin and its shameful effects, and I feel like I need assurance from others and a shoulder to cry on, Jesus is better.

When I run to lust instead of Jesus and I feel like the temptation disappearing completely will be proof that Jesus finally approves of me again, Jesus alone is better.

He’s better than my best ideas. He’s better than everyone approving of me. He’s better than a life without error or sin. If I gain all these things I think will make everything okay but I don’t have Jesus then NONE OF IT MATTERS.

When my job stinks and my classes are hard and my family is far away and the weather is stinking cold and I reach a point in my life where I realize that resolving those things is not what I need–it’s Jesus–that is where life is found. That is where joy is, where hope abounds and where blessing rains.

“In Your presence, there is fullness of joy. At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

— Psalm 16:11

 

Is Your Heart In the Right Place to Rush?

I’m gonna start this off by saying I absolutely love my fraternity, you should rush, 100%, and that I love Greek Life and DBU so much that I rushed as a junior.

It happens, I get it.

Also, I’m old. I get that, too.

Hi. My name is Ty, I’m from St. Louis, I fell off a cliff one time, I’m in Tau Alpha Phi, and I freaking love Jesus and Sky Ranch.

Most people who know anything about me know at least one of those things. Usually more. What they probably can’t tell you, however, is what church I’m plugged into, and where I find my community. My reputation does, in fact, precede me, but it doesn’t really include my community.

And I hate that.

I grew up without brothers–just 3 sisters–and I had always wanted one because of that. I found it hard as a middle schooler and high schooler to connect with other guys at a level that continued our friendships after high school, and I regret that in a lot of ways. So coming into college here at DBU, it made sense to rush Greek Life because fraternities are nothing but a bunch of guys you can suddenly call brothers that you end up doing most of life with. So I rushed.

I was torn between two specific fraternities here at DBU, and couldn’t choose. I wanted that community, that brotherhood, and I wanted God to give me relationships with other guys that refined me and made me look more like him, or at least that’s what I told myself.

To this day, I don’t know if I can tell you all that motivated me to rush, because I know it was partly the lack of brothers beforehand but I know now, looking back, that it was much more. What I can say is that I missed something huge through that week and much of the following pledgeship: that community had been right in front of me the whole time. I just didn’t want to jump in.

If you’re rushing at DBU this week or at any other fraternity/sorority on whatever campus and you’re doing it to find your community that you will be most plugged into and most heavily dedicated, Greek Life is not the place for it.

I mean, listen, like, you need to hear this and you need to preach this at yourself night and day ’til it’s that random thought that bugs you when your mind has 0.02 seconds to space out:

A fraternity/sorority is not the church.

A fraternity/sorority is not the church.

A fraternity/sorority is not the church.

A fraternity/sorority is not the church.

A FRATERNITY/SORORITY IS NOT THE CHURCH GOSH DANG IT.

It took me almost a year to learn this. Jesus has set up that community for you.

DO NOT rush to find your community at DBU. If you’re not plugged into a church, a fraternity or sorority will not offer for you what the church was originally designed to do.

I don’t want you to read this and hear me saying “Don’t rush at all.” What I want you to hear me saying is this:

“Don’t rush to find your base community. Don’t do it to find what the church is already offering. Rush because you want the guys or girls in your organization to push you toward the cross, to be resources for you when you need a hand and to be there for you when you need them, but don’t rest your spiritual standing with God on the fact that you rushed a Christian fraternity or sorority. That’s not good enough.”

The statement, “I’m cool with God and He’s cool with me on the whole church thing–I’m in a Christian fraternity!” is a dumb statement. Yes. Dumb.

Maybe the church harmed you in the past. Maybe it’s just not doing it for you now. Maybe you’re hoping that a fraternity or sorority will be the community the Lord has called you to dive into first and foremost.

It’s not.

I’ll say it again:

IT. IS. NOT.

He has established the church specifically for all of these things. And don’t think that if you’re not plugged into a church somewhere you’re not going to get a bid. Granted, that’s highly likely, but it’s not an exclusive deal.

But know this: according to Scripture, a.k.a. the Word of God, you should be plugged into a church. That is of utmost importance. To pick Greek Life over the church is not to follow Jesus. If that’s what you do, I’ll tell you right now your faith is not where you’re saying it is. Choosing Greek Life in place of the real thing is straight up just rejecting what God has for you, at least in part, for your personal preference (a preference that directly defies his Word, but you know, it’s whatever)

[It’s definitely not whatever. It’s literally such a huge deal.]

So rush. Do it. Go through the process and have a blast, every single one of you.

Unless you want your organization to be your main source of community and the main way you “get plugged in with God” because I’ll tell you right now, that’s not why these organizations exist.

Get plugged in at a local church. Get serious about following the Lord, and don’t just join a group because they always win Greek Games, or Spring Sing, or because their service project is something you’re really passionate about, or because they’re full of guys/girls “who are just like you,” or because they turned the hill behind the LC into a massive slide, or because they make the world’s meanest jalapeño poppers, or because they have so much fun that nobody really knows what’s going on–do it for whatever reason, just not to find your main sense of community.

It’s been under your nose and all around you since before you ever came to DBU.

 

PS If you’re reading this and you haven’t signed up for rush yet, you know you have to do that right? You don’t just show up.

You Literally Cannot Do This, So Stop.

I want you to read this like you’re about to make the worst decision of your life and I’m pleading with you through tear-soaked eyes to talk you off the ledge. That’s literally how important this is.

The room is tense–there’s a feeling in the air that seems to make everyone tight and unable to look anyone in the eye. Nobody’s said much for an hour, except the man leading the group, but he’s about to try and change that, and even though we’ve all seen it coming for the entire time we’ve been here, we’re all dreading it.

Then he asks that question.

“So, how have you been doing this week, dude? How’s your walk with Jesus looking? Anything I can be praying for in your life?”

UGH. Of course. He’s asking me. I spurt out the quickest answer I can think of.

“Yeah man, not really. I mean, I’m going through Romans right now and it’s really good,” God, please don’t let him ask me about specifics; the last time I read was actually a week ago and I honestly don’t even remember what chapter I’m supposed to be on now, “and as for prayer, I guess just a stronger push to stay closer to Him and keep growing in Him, you know? To be the man I’m supposed to be.”

I hate this.

It’s the same bull-crap answer. Every single week. Every single meeting. Every single guy.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever  been on either side of that conversation. Sometimes you’re the guy asking the questions, writing down the prayer requests, and then never praying for them because you lost the list somewhere among all the receipts you saved because you said you were going to use them to balance your checking account but you never organized them so you gave up. Most times, you’re the guy in the hot seat, chucking out some half-baked answer to an honestly serious and potentially life-giving question, scrambling to keep up an image of a Godly man even though you’re putting in a C-rate effort in the rest of your life.

A friend of mine said recently that he’d seen community done freakishly well and had also seen it done terribly, and the more I go through life, the harder it is for me to say I’m seeing it done well like he has.

Men, it’s time to wake up and face the truth: we suck at community and we suck bad.

Outside of the Christian sphere of influence, there are male relationships that appear to be pretty healthy, but are, at their core, centered on selfishness. Bromances usually spring out of times like at least two guys having spent a lot of time together, finding they have things in common, and then acting on those common interests (like hardcore sports fans or literally anything else). On the surface, they look great. But below deck, each guy is only there because the other is providing him with something: shallow companionship (i.e. lack of loneliness, affirmation on their opinions, etc.). Christian men are doing the exact same thing. And it makes me sick.

In our weekly/monthly/semi-annual/whatever Men’s Breakfasts/Men’s Lunches/Men’s Church League Sports/whatever other program you can come up with, we’re all afraid to expose our real lives and be vulnerable with each other. We have to have it all together. We have to have control of our families. We have to have a solid footing in our jobs and be excelling at them. We have to be 100% abstinent from extra-marital sex and pornography, lying, deceit, slander, and any other sin you could list.

I’ll say it again: we have to have it all together.

If you are a man who has trusted in Jesus and His sacrifice/resurrection and you can say you’ve never agreed with that statement for even a millisecond of your entire life, I’ll pay all your kids’ college tuition.

You can’t. That’s just it.

This lie cuts deep. It drives how we interact with each other. It shuts us down when we want to speak to a stranger about Jesus. We don’t want to be rejected. To be rejected means we failed. To fail means we’re inadequate. To be inadequate means we don’t have it all together. To not have it all together means God is displeased. And to have God displeased with you means your chances are done.

STOP IT.

NO THEY’RE NOT.

“There is none that are righteous: not one.” –Romans 3:10

We can all agree we’re messed up. All of us have something that makes us think, “Man, if they heard this part of my story they’d never want anything to do with me again.” We all do. It’s in there somewhere. But check this out:

“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” –Romans 5:8

I think a lot of us tend to look at that verse and let the past-tense of the second half of it determine how we think about God and His opinion of us.

We shouldn’t be.

The first part is present indicative.

“What the heck does that mean?” you ask, because the former English major in me just lost you. It means that it’s indicating what’s happening right now.

Present: right now
Indicative: indicating

“God demonstrates His own love for us” is a phrase that means God is doing this every single day. He shows us His love all the time! His love for what? For us.

His love for you is so strong it motivated Him to let Christ die on that cross. Do you know what He went through that day? It’s horrific. It’s beyond that. And He did it all for you. If he thinks enough of you to do that for you, then doesn’t it make sense that there’s not much that can change that opinion?

Yeah, that’s right, it’s literally nothing. He’s not going anywhere.

Dudes, we are so good at sitting around and talking literally all day about the Cowboys alone. Or maybe our wives/girlfriends. Or maybe TV shows like Friday Night Lights, the Flash, House of Cards, or whatever else you like. And do you know how many of those things matter?

Not one of them. Not even one.

So if we can do that, then why can’t we get ourselves to be real with the most important part of our lives: our relationship with Jesus? We’re so afraid of being wrong and being the broken guy that we waste our time doing nothing but performing (and performing really terribly, to be honest).

Stop it.

Quit fighting this alone.

You can’t do it alone.

You are broken.

So am I. But it doesn’t matter because Jesus died for us anyway. That’s how much He loves you. And me. So why would we act like what’s really fiction is true and deceive ourselves? That’s stupid.

We can’t make it on our own. We have to go together. We have to come to the honest conclusion that the only reason other people seem to be able to do good things like we can’t is because they’ve bought in to God and His vision for the world a little more than we have. Simple fix.

Easy fix? Not really. But it is simple:

Spend time with Jesus. Like, a lot of it.

Don’t just read the scripture, engage it. Dive into it. Circle the parts you don’t understand and make your Bible look like a doctoral student got ahold of it because it’s okay to not get it 100%. It’s okay to feel like you came up short in your Bible study time. God wrote it and you’re not God so don’t expect yourself to fully understand it all.

Be. Real. With. Your. Brothers. Stop holding back so you look like you’re not the broken guy. You’re all broken guys, so get over yourself and be real. Say how you’re struggling. Make it real to yourself and to your bros so you can lean on each other and make it through.

Be aggressive, yet purposeful.
Be patient with your progress, yet forward-moving. Don’t sit around and wait for God to magically make everything work out.

You cannot do it alone.

Stop trying to.

32 Quotes that Impacted My Life Big Time

Over the last two months, I’ve read some books and some passages of scripture and some social media posts from friends that have stood out to me as worth remembering, if not memorizing. I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to share those with you.

“It’s the stuff that masquerades as the real thing but it’s not. The perplexing thing is, instead of putting the fake stuff down, our reaction is to usually put more fake stuff on or decide that the fake stuff, while not that good, is good enough.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“‘God forgive me for my sin.’ I could pray this hourly and it would still be just as applicable as the hour before. But so would the cross.” -Renee Shofner

“These days, the view of God I hold onto isn’t Him being mad because I’ve missed the mark. It’s the one of Him seen through a bloody eye, scooping me into his arms, getting blood all over His shirt, and carrying me away to get healed.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“You need people who will step up and step in to call out your foolishness. Don’t despise their rebuke–what they’re doing is they’re watching you set yourself on fire, and they’re offering to be an extinguisher.” -Timothy Ateek, Breakaway

“I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.” -Jesus, in John 14:18

“I think satan exists, but I don’t give him a lot of thought. Neither does the Bible, honestly. We talk about satan way more than the Bible talks about satan…Jesus spoke with him for just a few seconds and then sent him away.” -Bob Goff,  Love Does

“There is not a single degree of difference between the strength of God’s love for Christ and Christ’s love for us. Not even a hint.” -Russ Ramsey, He Reads Truth

“Love precedes obedience. If you reverse that order, you lose the gospel. Obedience is not how we obtain Christ’s love–it is a response to it.” -Russ Ramsey, He Reads Truth

“[Speaking of his Jeep that leaked and pulled hard to the left while driving as results of an accident in which an elderly woman t-boned his Jeep and sent him flying through its roof] I want to leak from having been hit by Jesus. From having something crazy happen to me, something that flipped my life upside-down. I’ve met people like that–people who leak Jesus. Whenever you’re around them, Jesus just keeps coming up with words and actions. I don’t suppose everybody gets hit by Jesus, but those of us who have talk about Him differently. We start steering funny; we start leaking where we stand. And it’s because we got thrown from our lives in a terrific collision.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by Whom we cry out ‘Abba, Father!'” -Paul, in Romans 8:15

“If you are in Christ, you have overcome the world because He overcame the world. Nothing shall separate you from Him–from His love or His power.” -J.A. Medders, He Reads Truth

“You don’t need to know everything when you’re with someone you trust. That’s probably why Jesus’s disciples never said they were on a mission trip. I think they knew love already had a name and they didn’t need a program or anything else to define it. We don’t either. The kind of adventure Jesus has invited us on doesn’t require an application or prerequisites. It’s just about deciding to take up the offer made by a Father who wants us to come.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“All of these [scriptures] are good signposts, and they should be enough. Besides, we shouldn’t speak with an assurance we don’t really have like we’re God’s P.R. agent and risk misquoting the God of the universe, Who could turn us into a pile of salt. This all helps me be a little more respectful and humble when I’m attributing something to God.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“Discipline is choosing what you want most over what you want now.” -Abraham Lincoln

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing–to reach the mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from–my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing? All the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” -C.S. Lewis

“Jesus modeled that we don’t need to talk about everything we’ve done. It’s like He was saying, ‘What if we were to just do awesome incredible stuff together while we’re here on earth,’ and the fact that only He knew would be enough? If we did that, we wouldn’t get confused about Who was really making things happen.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

“[Jesus’s resurrection] is such an incredible claim that it should have been easy to disprove if it were false. But this is not what has happened.” -Russ Ramsey, He Reads Truth

“The Bible argues. It isn’t a string of pearls but a chain of linked thoughts. A unit of thought has a main point; everything else supports it. Trying to figure out how these supports work is what understanding is.” -John Piper

“John concludes his gospel account with these words: ‘Now there were many other things that Jesus did,” (21:25). I tend to think of those ‘many other things’ as grand displays of power, staggering miracles, and earth-shaking utterances. But I’m beginning to wonder if John is speaking of something else. How many words of love and kindness did Christ utter? How many meals humble prepared? How many quiet stoopings? How many washings of feet? How many wipings of tears from the eyes? How many ordinary, plain, and small glories did He display?” -Caleb Faires, He Reads Truth

“Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the Law.” -Romans 13:10

“A good neighbor makes himself available to those around him. This is who our neighbor is–anyone in our path. Compassion for a person who is suffering injustice or disadvantage breaks the heart of a good neighbor and moves him to act on that neighbor’s behalf. Jesus did this all the time. Do we? Unlike God, we all put up fences in an attempt to segment our responsibilities to love and care for others. Often we build walls around our hearts that prevent us from serving the broken, the victim, the offender, the poor, and the culturally unacceptable. The gospel calls for us to get rid of the fenced-off compounds we live in today, and engage one another in love. Loving this way will cost us resources, time, emotions, and comfort. But this is the way we were loved.” -Jevon Washington

“I am.” -G.K. Chesterton, when asked what is wrong with the world?

“Knowing what something is is not the same as knowing how something feels.” -Lois Lowry, The Giver

“Better is a moment that I spend with You than a million other days away.” -Phil Wickham, The Secret Place

“Nobody took Jesus’s life–He laid it down. And He said, ‘To prove it, I’m gonna pick it back up again.” -Todd Wagner, The Porch

“You can’t carry a cross without suffering.” -Kyle Idleman, Not a Fan

“Every morning, we crawl back on the altar and die to ourselves.” -Kyle Idleman, Not a Fan

“I don’t really know what Peter was thinking when he confessed that Jesus was ‘the Christ.’ Sometimes I read this story straight, like I did as a kid, and think that Peter and the rest of the disciples on this side of the empty tomb can see. But there are times when I read this story and all the unbelief surrounding his confession makes me wonder if he said it with a question mark in his mind. ‘We hope You’re the Messiah. Please be the Messiah.'” -Matthew B. Redmond, He Reads Truth

“The gospel message of grace and acceptance apart from works would turn Paul’s religious achievements into a pile of rubbish, and be the end of all his boasting.” -John Piper

“Sometimes Jesus intentionally frustrates us.” -Russ Ramsey, He Reads Truth

“Jesus is asking [the rich young ruler] to lay down his entire approach to security.” -Russ Ramsey

“God’s breath is the essential characteristic of the human soul. Any time we speak of the human soul, we are speaking of God’s breath. The two are inextricably connected. There was no human soul until God breathed, so God’s breath defines the human soul.” -Judah Smith, How’s Your Soul

The Good Cowboy

This post is password protected due to subject matter of adult themes. If you’d like the password, email me at tyl3rhirsch1@gmail.com

“It’s the stuff that masquerades as the real thing but it’s not. The perplexing thing is, instead of putting the fake stuff down, our reaction is usually to put more fake stuff on or decide that the fake stuff, while not that good, is good enough.” -Bob Goff

When I was probably fourteen or fifteen years old, my dad took me out to the pasture to check on our cows. He had only recently begun raising cattle, so the herd was still small, and most of them were heifers, which means they’d never had a calf before.

A member of our church had land they let dad use to let his cattle graze on, and the easiest way to get to that land from our house back then was straight through the pasture on the neighbor’s property, where he was grazing a herd of his own. As we rolled up to the fence separating the two properties, we noticed something out of the ordinary. The neighbor’s bull was pacing along the fence, snorting and huffing and dripping snot out of his nose like a water faucet. He was heated.

At first I thought he was just mad, but then I figured it out: our heifers were on the other side of the fence, and he wanted them.

And that was a major problem.

You see, it was March, and cows have a gestation period of about nine months. If that bull were to jump the fence and breed our heifers, their babies would be born in the dead of winter, lowering their chance of survival to almost zero.

Immediately my dad jumped into crisis mode. He inched the four-wheeler closer and closer to the bull, coaxing him away from the fence as best he could with his voice and with grain, but it did absolutely nothing. The bull was 110% determined to get over or through that fence, whatever it took.

And eventually he did. Even though the fence was sharp and spiny barbwire, he risked getting tangled and even ending his life to jump the fence and chase the heifers for 30 seconds of pleasure. It didn’t matter what my dad said. Even though he was looking out for not only the bull but for the heifers, their calves, and the bull’s owner, too (because once the calves are born it becomes an issue figuring out who they belong to), even though he was doing all that, the bull couldn’t hear him because he wasn’t my dad’s bull.

“I assure you: Anyone who doesn’t enter the sheep pen by the door but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. The doorkeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought all his own outside, he goes ahead of them. The sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. They will never follow a stranger; instead they will run away from him, because they don’t recognize the voice of strangers.”

When my dad has his cattle breed, he’s intentional about it. He keeps the bull separate from the cows until the right time so that when the babies are born, they’re set up for success. It’s not to limit the cows and keep them from pleasure, but to look out for their best interest and well-being, as well as their babies’. The whole thing is incredibly deliberate–no sneakiness, no tricks, no lies, just honesty and openness and care.

I think Jesus thinks of sex the same way.

We want to do it our way, when we want it, where we want it, how we want it, not listening to what he says. But if we’re honest, truly full pleasure, truly fulfilled intimacy is only achieved at the right time, in the right setting. Sex is for marriage. That intimacy is unparalleled, and God knows it. In scriptures like 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 He’s warning us, “Don’t jump that fence! You’ve been given a time and place to experience that pleasure and intimacy, and it’ll be given again in the future! If you jump now, not only will you risk hurting yourself, there are so many others’ lives you’re affecting, too. I love you. I care about you, all of you. Listen to me.”

But if we’re not spending time hearing what His voice sounds like, actually acting like we’re His, how are we going to hear him when we’re ready to risk it all for thirty seconds of pleasure?

It takes time. It takes effort. If we’ve accepted His free gift of grace on the cross and in the empty tomb, we’ll be with Him in paradise but to know Him and to hear His voice in the darkness today, we need to listen in the places He’s already spoken, like His Word.

That bull made it over the fence. He bred something like 15 to 20 of our heifers. Most of their calves died that winter.

The decisions we make when we think we’re in the dark, we think we’re alone, and that no one else will be affected reach much farther than we could ever imagine.

For the millions of people out there who are struggling with lust, pornography, masturbation, premarital sex, and all other kinds of sexual immorality, listen to me:

I get it.

I’ve been there.

Heck, I am there.

It’s not bad that life is stressful and you want a break from it. It’s not bad that since you feel like people don’t like you then all you really want is to feel good about yourself–to feel powerful. It’s not bad that you desire intimacy and pleasure.

All of those desires are good desires. What is not good is when we think that porn, sex with our girlfriend/boyfriend, or anything else that isn’t Jesus will meet those needs.

They won’t.

Like, ever.

Think about the shame and humiliation that always follows. We can’t escape it.

But when we fix our eyes on Jesus by waking up every single morning and deciding every single hour to commit all over again to fight for Him, filling our minds with His promises by memorizing scripture, and being real, open, and honest with those who are closest to us and that we know will tell us the absolute truth when we mess up, we will hear His voice when He calls us away from the fence and leads us right through the door to the real stuff. The good stuff. The best stuff.

Psalm 16 says “In His presence, there is fullness of joy, at His right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Who is at God’s right hand?

That’s right–Jesus.

In His presence, walking daily, hourly, heck, by the minute, with Him showers pleasure and joy like we could never imagine.

Tired

I’m sick.

Here I am sitting in the middle of the city I’ve dreamed of living in for years, surrounded by incredible friendships and serving in a church whose sole focus is radically changing the culture of Dallas by living wholly in the love of Jesus and I should be ecstatic. And in a lot of ways, I am.

But when I look around at this beautiful nation that I’ve been so blessed to call home I’m freaking sick. It’s absolutely horrific.

Politically left members of my own generation are acting like total babies because Trump was elected president.

Practically the entire political right in this country seems to have forgotten how rotten a person Trump has shown himself to be over the last few decades and have changed their tune dramatically from when Trump was one of 16 possibilities rather than the president-elect himself, going so far as to say that God himself chose Trump to lead (and while the scripture does say God appoints authorities over us that is still a different discussion for a different day).

Violence in the U.S. is outrageous. Five law enforcement officers have been killed since SUNDAY. (WFAA Channel 8, Dallas, 11/23/16 6:00 PM broadcast)

FIVE.

Families are being torn apart. Strangers are attacking each other simply because of who they voted for. What were once deeply-rooted friendships are now overturning at a moment’s notice, maybe never to be mended again.

It’s Thanksgiving but nobody in America seems to want to talk about anything except all the stuff that pisses us off. Evidently we don’t know anything except how much of a failure our country is becoming right under our noses.

Well I’m tired of it.

Not to the point that I want to ignore it. Oh, no. There is work to be done.

Liberals need to get up off their butts and stop crying, focus on what their values are and start doing something about it. If they want to see change in America that aligns with their beliefs, crying about it and playing with Play-Doh® isn’t going to do anything. Did you see Martin Luther King Jr. sitting criss-cross applesauce on the university quad bawling his eyes out? No. He got work done. Even from jail (even though we should never have put him in a position where he had to, but that’s another conversation, too).

Conservatives need to shut up. We’re not helping anyone by rubbing Trump’s win in everybody’s faces. So what. He won. Have you forgotten how crookedly he treats the people around him? It occurs to me that quite a few people have. I once read an article that proposed the idea that a young man addicted to pornography can’t expect to waltz into marriage and suddenly be freed from it because he’s now sleeping with his wife. It will still be there unless he does something about it. In the same way, Trump’s position in the White House isn’t gonna magically change his heart and his actions, either. And at 70–I’m just saying–his chances are slim.

I want us to remember things we can still be thankful for today, because God knows we need to.

This election showed us a ton of things in America have changed.

BUT

We still put people on the moon first.

We still invented Dr. Pepper. And Cheez Whiz. And the alarm clock. And the car. And the airplane. And the internet. And the calculator. And the cell phone. And cotton candy.

And Blue Bell.

We still won 2 world wars (and, admittedly, war isn’t something to be proud of but at least the ability to put an end to a few is, I think).

We still are a beacon of light and hope to millions upon millions of people each year. The reason we have an immigration problem stems from the fact that America is still a land of opportunity.

I could make this list go on forever, but I hope you’re starting to see the point because I don’t have the patience to write for that long. We need to get over ourselves and remember the most important underlying thought in all of this: whether we voted red, blue, green, or any other color this election, and however we feel about the results, we are still Americans at the most fundamental level, and we need to act like it.

Together.

We’re not going to make it through the next four years if we don’t.

I don’t believe that God is sovereign.

There is strength within the sorrow;

there is beauty in our tears.

And You meet us in our mourning,

with a love that casts out fear.

And You are working in our waiting,

You’re sanctifying us.

When beyond our understanding,

You’re teaching us to trust.

Your plans are still to prosper; You have not forgotten us.

You’re with us in the fire and the flood.

You are faithful forever–perfect in love,

You are sovereign over us.

If you can tell me you honestly believe every word in that song every minute of every day and you’ve never doubted it I’ll give you $100 right now.

Seriously. You tell me right now that this hasn’t been a question for you ever and I will drop everything and give you a crisp one-hundred dollar bill.

If it were the other way around and you were offering me that cash, I wouldn’t get it. I’d have to be straight up with you and say I doubt that. I doubt it every day. I mean, if we’re going to be 100% honest I can’t tell you I believe that God really is sovereign often enough for it to make a difference for me, and I doubt you’re much different.

I mean, think about it–I fall off a cliff and I look at my life post-accident and I find myself wheelchair-bound and hopping around with a walker to the point that going about 200 yards knocks me out and makes me stop to catch my breath every ten steps. What would that do to you when you’ve spent the last 20 years of your life more active than half the people you knew? I ran track for almost ten years, played basketball, football, ran cross-country, spent my college years in the gym and running and working on my feet for sometimes 12 hours straight, and now all I do is sit at home and watch The Walking Dead and The Office while my dog tries to lay on my lap and I keep having to kick her off.

Even worse, I’m a people person. I spent my days interacting with dozens, if not hundreds of people. You know who I see now? Pretty much just my mom, dad, and sisters with a few friends sprinkled in every now and then. And while I love my family to death and would spend the rest of my life with only them if I needed to without question, it’s not what my life was before.

And to top it all off, I spent the summer of 2015 discovering that Jesus has given me a passion to serve Him and also kids at my single favorite place on earth–Sky Ranch. But now, there’s a solid chance I won’t get to do that again this year. I’ve already had to drop out of school for the semester. Will I have to drop camp, too?

Capture
A quick shot from one of our community nights last summer.

Honestly, I think I’d feel better if I had a solid answer–a yes or a no, not a maybe. But I don’t. I have a nice, strong, brutish maybe. I can start bearing weight on my foot the week staff training starts, and some people with my injury haven’t had required therapy. So since I have no idea if I’ll actually need therapy or not, and won’t know until my eight weeks of non-weight-bearing are up, I’m kind of freaking out here.

I want to know. I want answers. I want the security that comes with having enough information to make a plan.

I hate not having a plan.

“Lean on Jesus and trust Him to take care of it all in His timing–that can be your plan,” you might say. But I have a serious problem with that. Not that I disagree, but that I have serious trouble actually buying in to that. I lay awake at night wondering what it’ll feel like in May thinking about how surely I knew that Jesus was sending me to camp for the summer, but instead I’m 627 miles away sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day. I have actually lost more hours of sleep over this than I’d like to admit.

I really suck at believing that God is sovereign.

Capture2

I want this recovery process to be over and to be back on my feet. I want to go to camp and love Jesus in a way kids can’t ignore, get to know them and my co-staff and make lifelong friends. I want to meet Jesus through those people, and through the quiet, calm serenity of camp. I want to get sweet tan lines from my  tanks and my Chacos. I want to go to camp.

But what if I don’t?

What will happen in May if I don’t go to camp?

How will I feel?

You know what the answer is to all of those questions? It doesn’t stinking matter.

Jesus said something pretty profound in Matthew 6:34–

Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Dang right it does. Today sucks.

Which is exactly what He wants me, and you, to get a grip on. In my case, stop worrying about May. Stop worrying about camp. Just completely forget about your tan lines. Focus on today. What do you need to do today?

I need to talk to Jesus, learn His word, and see where He wants me to go today. And where He wants me to go is where I already am–living where He’s put me and acting like His sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection we just celebrated last weekend actually means something to me. It means everything, and I need to show it.

Here’s another song I need to start playing until I can’t get it out of my head:

I don’t know about tomorrow–
I just live from day to day.
I don’t borrow from it’s sunshine,
for it’s skies may turn to gray
I don’t worry o’er my future,
for I know what Jesus said!
And today He walks beside me
For He knows what lies ahead.
Many things about tomorrow
I don’t seem to understand.
But I know Who holds tomorrow
and I know Who holds my hand.

I am not a praying man.

“What’s it gonna take to get you to talk to Me?”

Apparently for me, the answer to that question is “Man, I really don’t know. Seems like even falling to my death off a cliff isn’t enough.”

Which is really sick and twisted, isn’t it?

It takes some time seeing reason in an accident like mine. Honestly, from the outside in, it looks like a massive, bone-headed stupid mistake, and on my part, it really was. We were on that hiking trip to see the crag at the end of the trail, but I took a detour, made a brash, quick decision to inspect a waterfall halfway up the trail, and ended up at the bottom of a cliff with a shattered foot, elbow, and a face covered in blood. Needless to say, we never made it to the crag.

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This is the cliff we were headed to, not the one I fell from.

And I feel like a complete moron, not only because I made that idiotic decision to inspect that cliff, but largely because literally thousands of people have been praying for me in this, for survival on the day of the accident, for healing since, and I can count the times I’ve talked to Jesus in this whole thing on one hand.

What a joke, right?

I wrote a whole blog post about how it happened; how I was ready to go because on the way down I saw no other options for me getting off that mountain than in a body bag, and I figured, “If this is it, Jesus, I guess this is it. Take me home.” And it inspired a lot of people and everybody applauded me. But honestly, since then, I don’t know how many times I’ve actually spent talking to Jesus about this, about life, about Him, but I do know it’s less than five, and for that I am utterly ashamed.

So here I am, lying in bed in my grandparents’ house in Dallas, and I hear Him whisper,

“What’s it gonna take to get you to talk to Me, dude? You should’ve died on that mountain and I got you out of there. You talk about peace, and how you want to find My will in this but then you go trying to find that peace in all the wrong places—timing, lust, logic, even sleep—but you’re so wrong, brother. You’re not going to find peace there no matter how hard you try to make it fit. There’s only one way, and you know it.”

So I’m beating myself up because I know. I know exactly what that one way is, but I’ve ignored it for almost a month. I need to just talk to You. I need to just talk with You.

What I need to do is to pray.

I heard one pastor say that prayer doesn’t do anything. We put so much hope in prayer itself like the praying is gonna make anything happen through its own power. The real power is in Jesus and how He chooses to act.

Well, duh.

But that doesn’t mean that this open line of communication, this connection to the Maker of the Stars is useless. It’s not pointless. He uses it to soothe my heart. He inhabits it to show me His presence in my life in a way unlike any other. Prayer is not me falling to my knees and pleading with teary eyes that He heals me tomorrow, then walking away wondering if He’ll really do it—it’s dialogue. Sometimes it’s just listening to Him. It’s two-way communication, and as a talker, that’s something I need desperately.

So I guess I have to make a choice tonight, and then again tomorrow, and later on tomorrow again, then again, and then the next day, to keep that line of communication open. It’s not a one-time switch-flip that provides a constant dialogue (although I can have that dialogue with Him all day if I really want to). It’s recurring. It’s constantly happening again and again, not constantly happening without interruption.

God help me if I don’t take advantage of this opportunity to keep breathing–if I take it for granted. I sure as heck know I didn’t get here because of my superior knowledge or skills. I’m still here because He wants me to be. So I’d better start talking and see what needs to be done.

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I fell on the Rock, and He broke me to pieces.

What goes through your mind when your foot slips on wet rock and sends you flying through the air off a 30-foot cliff? Surprisingly, a lot.

I never thought that would be a sentence I could write in retrospect of my own life but I can. A week ago it would’ve been a sentence of fiction. Today, it’s an autobiography. A week ago, I slipped and fell 30 feet and honestly should not be here right now to write this story. But I’m here, and I remember a lot.

So what does go through your mind while you fall to the bottom of a waterfall with more fall than water? The exact opposite of what I just told you.

The whole thing maybe took half a second, but being the over-expander that I am, my mind naturally shoved as many words into my brain in that half second as it could, but none of them made me think like what I wrote above. My first thought was that it wasn’t even real–a phenomenon my mind judged to be its way of warning me what would happen if I weren’t more careful. But my mind was wrong. It wasn’t warning me of anything potential–it was processing something that was actually happening.

So my next thought was, “Holy crap, I really am falling.” Naturally, I’m a fixer. When there’s a problem, I look immediately for what I can do to fix it. But I couldn’t find anything. I was going to hit the bottom, and judging from the distance I’d spent about 5 minutes inspecting beforehand, I was going to die.

This is the part where most people’s stories would start changing directions. Some would scream. Some would panic. Some would call on their deity to save them and let them survive. But my reaction was unnatural even to me.

Scary things do a number on me. The very preview for Insidious 2 put me on the floor of the theater shaking like a leaf, and it was laughable. So, you know, you’d think the thought of dying would make me scream like a Roman Candle.

But I was peaceful.

“Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7 NLT)

You don’t know how much it exceeds what you can understand until panic is the only thing that makes sense.

I can’t explain it. It flooded me. It comforted me, it took me to the ground just letting Him hold me and carry me all the way home.

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And then I woke up. Except I was still at the bottom of that waterfall, on a rock, broken to pieces but breathing. Drenched in my own blood but crying out with a strength that didn’t make sense. I should’ve woken up with Him and my grandma and great grandma and my loved ones who’d already done the same surrounding me but I was surrounded by living friends, and strangers whose hearts were so huge and so beautiful that I could see them even though my mind was loopy and my short-term memory sucked. Thirty of them, volunteers who didn’t have to be there, surrounded me, got me on a stretcher, made me so comfortable, and carried me two and a half miles off that mountainside in Northwest Arkansas like I was their own son, or brother. Then they loaded me into a helicopter, and I had time to sleep.

Except I didn’t sleep. My mind just wouldn’t stop thinking. All I could focus on was that crazy peace. I was ready to go. Not that I wanted to, but that I saw no other option, and I was okay with the one that I saw. Jesus held me, all the way down.

You might be raising your hands, saying, “Wow, another Jesus story. Big deal. Miracles like that happen, it wouldn’t be the first time.” To which I would say, “Yeah, you’re right–they do.” But honestly, my own faith, though a part of my life for pretty much ever, wasn’t much of anything before that fall.

I let my life take over. Crazy schedules and workaholic-ness dominated my time. I was secretly addicted to pornography and didn’t want anyone to know. I spent no time with Jesus on my own outside of church services and the occasional sermon podcast. I wasn’t giving Him my whole heart the way I said I had, so this fall and my reaction therein didn’t have anything to do with my own faith being strong or anything like that. It sucked.

I had peace because He gave it to me.

And I learned something huge at the bottom of that waterfall:

“Whoever falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whoever it falls, it will grind him to powder.” (Matthew 21:44 HCSB)

Jesus used that fall to break me, literally, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, whatever–He literally used that cliff to make this verse come to life in my story, and I’ve got months ahead to see what that looks like.

For now, it means resting in Him–remembering His grace and goodness, His sovereignty, His blessing, and His beauty. It means thanking Him night and day for not only sparing me on that mountain but surrounding me by such incredible, beautiful, people. It means remembering every single day that no matter how much just sitting on the couch watching Friends and House of Cards can eventually suck, I’m alive, and I’m going to walk on my own again. I’m going to get use of my arm back, and I’m going to recover 100%. None of that should be what I’m typing but it is, and He is merciful.

So falling off a 30-foot cliff can teach you a lot. Mainly, how small you are. I’d do wrong if I didn’t listen to it.

I’m Getting Baptized! (Finally)

It’s been long enough.

You may be thinking, “Tyler–what the heck, man? I thought you were saved. I thought you’ve been saved. I thought that all these years you’ve been following Jesus that it’s been legit and it’s been for real. Why the heck are you just now getting baptized?” Well, all of those observations are true. Kind of.

Yeah, I’ve been saved. That definitely happened. Problem is, I said it happened twice before it actually did happen. Once at nine years old, and again at twelve, I told the world that Jesus had saved me. But you see, He hadn’t. Not yet.

I said the prayer (twice), and I listened to what the pastors said over and over but the truth is, my heart never ever changed. Not at first. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I learned what it truly meant to be saved–to have the Creator of the world in your own heart. Not until 15 did I realize even a smidgen what that meant for me.

But by the time I finally decided to do this stuff for real, I was terrified that the church I was in wouldn’t accept me. I was afraid they would see me up there for the third time in six years and say, “Well, here we go again. It’s not legitimate this time but let’s play along and let him have his day anyway.” Looking back, it sounds absolutely ridiculous that my church would act that way (especially now that I know beyond any doubts they wouldn’t have even gotten close to that), but in the moment I was terrified.

I let that fear control me for years. I don’t know how long it was that I stayed in my pew on Sunday mornings because I was shaking inside over what they would think if I decided to waltz up to the front one more time, but what I do know is that eventually the idea of getting baptized left my mind altogether and I forgot to do it. Eventually, another six years slipped away from me. And I know that during most of those six years, I was following the path the Lord was leading me down but the reality is that I can’t fully follow Him and keep his commandments if I don’t do the thing He did as the single most important thing to do first in his ministry: get baptized.

So today I’m proclaiming to the world: I’m a screwed up human being. Sometimes, I don’t even feel human inside because of my guilt and shame but the beautiful thing is that Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross frees me from literally everything. Guilt. Shame. Fear. The stress of figuring out what He wants me to do (He’s pretty clear and gives the answers exactly when He’s ready–plus baptism is a pretty clear indication of at least one thing He’s leading me to right now). All of those have no power over me anymore and the minute I decide to throw all my anxieties on Jesus and let Him sort everything out is the minute I start living in that freedom in a way that I can honestly never imagine.

Next Sunday I’m getting baptized. And it’s because I want to be His friend–to keep His commandments in the hopes that I’m led to know Him more and He be my very best friend in the whole world.

It’s been long enough.