Category: Matthew

Real Friends Know They’re Poor in Spirit

Did your school do Red Ribbon Week? It was HUGE in my schools. All the way from Kindergarten to senior year, there were dress-up days, assemblies, fun competitions during the lunch hour, and so much more. In high school, one of our teachers held a Drunk Goggle Mario Kart tournament. We would wear these goggles that looked like safety goggles but they warped your vision to something similar to what it would look like with a BAC anywhere between 0.8. and 1. 5. (Jury’s still out on whether or not that was appropriate, but it was dang sure fun! And it was hilarious to watch my classmates get super frustrated every time they smacked into the wall in the Coconut Mall or fell into the oblivion of space on Rainbow Road).

The whole point was that when our vision was altered, focusing on the track was basically impossible. We weren’t looking at the screen appropriately, so chaos ensued.

Jesus is very conscious of this paradigm. Most of us just want to be like our friends, to go the way they’re going and be like them because not being accepted is one of our greatest fears. We abhor the thought of what it would mean to be an outcast, so we compromise to get what we want. And people get hurt. A lot.

The whole world is full of this. Everybody wants to be like everybody else, but nobody knows how to quit all the pain and hurt. And though Jesus does have a solution, most of us aren’t going to like it very much.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.”

Matthew 7:13-14 CSB

As a high schooler, I didn’t have very many friends. At the time, I thought it was because I took the high road most often and everybody else just settled for cheap fun at parties out in random corn fields getting drunk and doing stupid stuff because there was, in their minds, nothing else to do. In reality, I was a self-centered, stuck up Pharisee who literally thought I was a better person simply because I didn’t get drunk along with them.

Matt Chandler said once, “If you say the right thing the wrong way, you’re still wrong.” That was me. See, I thought I was taking Jesus’s narrow road by staying away from the parties and letting everybody know how wrong they were for going. But the truth is all of us were wrong. We all thought we knew what was best, and we decided in our own hearts that our way of doing things was the right one; that the things we said were most valuable really were the most valuable and important things, and everybody else had better go along with us or they’re wrong. But that’s not what Jesus is saying. He’s saying that there’s only one way to find life, to find growth, to find good, and it’s Him.

My dad owns a lawn care company, and in middle school and high school, I worked for him in the summers. Whenever we had a large, open field to mow, he trained me to find something at the end of the field, dead ahead of where I was supposed to mow, and look at it the entire time I made a pass down the field. If I didn’t look away, my line that I had just cut would be straight, and would look beautiful. If I didn’t focus, the lines would be so off-kilter that the mistake would be visible for weeks.

When we have a target to focus on, the results lead to good things, life, and blessing. The problem for us is sin. It literally means missing the mark. To be a sinner literally means “to be one who missed the target.”

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,”

Titus 2:11-12 ESV

Jesus is that grace of God that appeared and brought salvation for all people. He died in your place because of your self-centeredness and is offering you the gift of a relationship with Him-direct access to the God of the universe. And in Titus’s words, the only way there is to realize we’re living our lives enslaved to anything but God, without self-control, and beaten down. We’re poor in Spirit. If we don’t get that we miss everything.

Jesus’s target is simple, and it’s been saturated throughout the Sermon on the Mount: trust God over yourself and you will find life. Anything else will destroy you. According to Jesus, lots of people miss this line. You and your friends are on one of these two paths: you either trust that Jesus is wiser than you and y’all follow His lead, or you don’t. That’s it. Every decision that you and your friends make about what you will do, what you will say, how you will treat others, and so much more, is filtered through this dichotomy. How are you doing? How are your friends doing?

Take a look through these two lists of fruits, or results, and ask yourself: which of these do I see in my life and the lives of the people around me? What’s most common?

FAKE FRIENDS:

“Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things—as I warned you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Galatians 5:19-21 CSB

REAL FRIENDS:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”

Galatians 5:22-26 CSB

So what is it? Where do you and your friends fall? Are you really being authentic, genuine friends to each other, or are you using each other? Are you being a real friend or a fake friend? When you look at the people around you, it shouldn’t be too hard to see.

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

Matthew 5:3 CSB

People who think they’re rich in spirit are only looking at themselves. Sure, they may look around at the people near them every once in a while, but then it’s right back to them. When you’re looking at yourself, it’s easy to think you’re rich in spirit because you are small. Ever heard the phrase, “You’re missing the forest for the trees”? A mature oak tree can produce 10,000 acorns and has an average of 200,000 leaves every year. That’s a lot to look at and to focus on if you only look at the one tree. But a forest is much more interesting than 10,000 acorns. There are beautiful birds, peaceful deer to watch (or eat if you’re into it), silly raccoons and squirrels to laugh at, awesome views in clearings and along trails to take in, and sometimes there’s cozy cabins to hunker down in or maybe even towering waterfalls to swim under. But you miss all of that when you’re focused on the oak tree. When you look up, you realize that this tree is just a small part of something much bigger and more beautiful than itself. Fake friends don’t get this. Fake friends focus on themselves so Fake Friends think they’re rich in spirit.

People who know they’re poor in spirit aren’t looking at themselves; they’re looking at Jesus. They realize there’s a lot more going on in the world than just them and they want to be a part of it. So they wake up every morning with a desire to quit looking at themselves and start looking at Jesus. They do what it takes to remove the distractions that are always trying to pull them onto the wide path. And the best part? They find life every time they get their eyes off themselves and look to Jesus.

Look at the fruit of your life. Galatians makes it clear. When you’re focused on Jesus, you’ll see a lot more love. When you’re looking at the Father instead of yourself, joy rules the day, even in hard times. With the Holy Spirit as your target for your attention, you will find yourself peaceful even in the craziest, most terrifying moments. Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; all of it will be evident more and more every day. When you’re looking at yourself, you’ll see hatred sabotaging your friendships. When you’re self-centered with your attention, your anger will explode and hurt you and your friends. Looking at you and only you will bring in all kinds of selfish ambitions, dissensions, envy, promiscuity, and so much more (not to mention sexual immorality, drunkenness, and all the like). Look at your friends and ask yourself if you genuinely want what they have.

If it’s not Jesus, it’s only going to destroy you. You need to be willing to trust Him on that or you will be seriously hurt by sin one day.

He loves you so much He didn’t want to leave you stuck without a way to focus on Him and be with Him. So TRUST Him! Realize you’re poor in Spirit and let Him fill that emptiness with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, & self-control.

Real Friends Do What You Need

If you think humans are naturally good people who just need kindness and smiles to be okay, you’ve clearly never watched Super Nanny.

My wife and I are expecting our first baby in October, so, naturally, we’ve been looking to Super Nanny Jo Frost for all our discipline training. Kidding! (kinda)

Regardless, we’ve watched a lot of the show, and there’s a constant theme running through basically every episode: nearly every parent whose home has descended into kid-induced chaos shares this behavior: they all want to be their kids friends more than they want to be their parent. They never say no, they spend thousands on their kids more than they should just because the kid wants more stuff, and they give them food with the same nutritional value as whatever you’d find on a random trip to the local landfill. And they do all this because they don’t want to have to hear their kid scream. “I’ll give you whatever you want! Just stop crying!”

They do a pretty good job of following the American version of the Golden Rule:

“Don’t do anything to others that you wouldn’t want them to do to you.”

The Golden Rule

That’s how most of us have learned it, right? According to the way we teach our kids, this is as high as it gets – nothing is more important. The “gold standard” is that we should keep away from doing anything we wouldn’t want others to do to us. Or, put the other way – we should only do to others what we would want them to do to us. If everybody just acted kind, we wouldn’t have any problems.

This rule seems pretty simple, right? Pretty easy? Well, it’s exactly what all the parents on Super Nanny are doing. I wonder what they’d say if we asked them how easy it is to follow this rule.

It’s not. That’s what they’d say. They’re drowning – all they ever do is give their kids what they want but the problem is none of the kids have the ability to know and value this fact: sometimes what we want has to take second place to what we need.

The problem with seeing the Golden Rule the way we do has a few sides to it, so the rest of this article is going to tackle each one and offer what I think, and most importantly what God thinks, is a better alternative.

Side #1: Wants Trump Needs

Let’s face it: when it comes to choosing between what we want and what we need, we let our wants trump our needs more often than not. We’re really good at pushing off responsibilities and indulging our desires. We’re really bad at getting the work done and relaxing afterward. Work is not easy. And we don’t like not easy. So even though we may need to get up and out of bed and get our day started so we’re not late to work, we want to sleep another 15 minutes. So we do. And the cycle repeats itself all day long. Before we know it, that pile of dirty dishes has been sitting in the sink for 10 days.

This makes our version of the golden rule exceptionally difficult. It’s what we see playing out on Super Nanny; if the only thing our friends ever do to or for us is what we want, our jacked-up wants will ruin everything. If I want my friend to let me drive his 1969 Mustang at 100mph in heavy traffic, and he lets me, he shouldn’t be surprised when I total it 2 minutes into the drive. If I want to be able to make fun of my “friends” for their mistakes, I shouldn’t be shocked when they eventually boil over and snap back at me, or when their ability to make and maintain friendships is broken in the future. I may want it, but I don’t always accurately estimate the cost.

Other times, I desperately need things I would never want. Surgery for a broken bone is excruciatingly painful, which is why they have to knock you out to do it. But if I was so scared of the IV needle that I refused the surgery, I’d have to live with a broken arm and the issues it caused as it healed without the surgery for the rest of my life.

We may like to let our wants trump our needs but if we live like this and only ever give people what they want, what we actually end up doing is hurting each other unnecessarily.

Side #2: Jesus Never Said It That Way

Most people attribute the original Golden Rule quote to Jesus. But there are others who said versions of it literally hundreds and thousands of years before Him; Rabbis like Hillel, Greek philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle – even Confucius had his own iteration of it. Multiple humans have believed the idea that we ought to treat each other the way we want to be treated. And while Jesus may not have been the first publicly-recorded teacher to teach this idea, His version escalates the issue to a stellar level that all the rest don’t even come close to.

The version of the Golden Rule from an ancient teacher that comes closest to Jesus’s version is from Aristotle. A student once asked him how we should treat our friends. Aristotle replied: “As we would that they should act to us.” According to Aristotle, this kind of behavior only applies to our friends.

But look at what Jesus actually said:

“7 Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Who among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him. 12 Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 7:7-12 CSB

The verse that actually contains the Golden Rule is book-ended by God Himself. Verse 12 starts with a “therefore,” and every time you read “therefore” in the scriptures, you need to back up and find out what it was put there for. In this case, it makes verse 12 a stamp of practical action on verses 7-11: your God is good and you should seek what’s on His heart.

The end of verse 12 makes the Golden Rule a kind of headline for the Old Testament: treating others with the behavior you would want is the banner over all of God’s instruction for the world prior to Jesus.

These two ideas are inseparable from each other. To leave either on their own creates even more problems.

If all you do is seek what’s on God’s heart without putting any of it into practice, you become a Pharisee; AKA you care a lot about God’s word but very little about the people He died to save. If all you do is treat others how you want without seeking what’s on God’s heart, pain and chaos will ensue (as we just observed with Super Nanny above).

Jesus’s Better Alternative

When we seek what’s on God’s heart, what we end up wanting for ourselves is what He wants for us. This becomes our basis for how to treat others. And unlike Aristotle’s teaching, it’s the basis for how we treat all others, not just the ones we like or who we consider friends.

“1 So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Colossians 3:1-3 CSB

It’s not easy to seek what God wants. Centering your life around the idea that you’ve already died and your life isn’t your own is crazy difficult. It almost sounds morbid. But it’s essential. It’s what we need. Any “friends” who don’t get this will only end up using us for their own desires. Any time we call ourselves a “friend” but we don’t get this, we’ll just end up using them, too.

Fake friends are the kind who let you have whatever you want. They are afraid of the pain of confrontation, so they flatter us and avoid difficult conversations, letting us do what we want and be what we want and ignore what we actually are. And most likely, when times get hard and we need them to stand by us, they ghost us and are nowhere to be found.

Real friends are literally the opposite. They know who we are: very good creations of God Almighty, who have been poisoned by sin, in every part of our lives, making us not good at all. They know we’ve been bought with a price; by the blood of Jesus. And they know that every second we spend living like that’s not true only further injures and imprisons our souls. They see us dousing ourselves in gasoline and lighting ourselves on fire in stupidity and they offer to be the water hose we need to put out the blaze. The question becomes which we will love more: life with the fire or without it. The help from the friend with the water is only beneficial if the fire dies, and often we don’t want it to. We’d rather keep it alive.

So what are your friends giving you? Water or gasoline? You will be the average of the five people you pay the most attention to. So check your own life – do an inspection. Are there destructive fires raging all around you? Do your friends fuel them bigger and brighter and more detrimental or do they help you put them out? Do you even want that fire to go out?

The fire of God is good – a passion for His name and His glory and a relationship with Him is good. A fire without Him, however, is terribly bad. Are you willing to put the fire out, to kill it and receive the life-giving relief of the Living Water of God? You have to decide, and whatever you decide, be consistent. Follow through and let your friends have the hard conversations that you need. As you seek what’s on God’s heart, you’ll find that you’re beginning to want those conversations more and more.

Real Friends Pray; Fake Friends Promote

You ever see that guy on the street corner downtown that prays at the top of his lungs with a megaphone? Like even the megaphone gets worn out. “GOD IN HEAVEN, WOULD YOU SPARE YOUR WRATH ON THOSE HEATHEN THAT ARE WALKING INTO THAT BAR OVER THERE WITH THE TANK TOPS AND SHORT SHORTS!? DO NOT INCUR YOUR WRATH ON THEM THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO!!!!” He’s kinda scary to me, honestly.

Or what about this guy: “Father, we just love You so much, Jesus and God we pray that as we come into Your presence, Lord, that you multiply Your heavenly blessings to us, Lord, and that we seek, Oh God, that we seek Your will tonight, Father God Lord, and Jesus Your power from heaven is matchless, and powerful, and majestic, and so good, and Lord Jesus would you…” CRINGE. What if I talked to my bros that way? “Yeah dude, idk bro I just think it’s not the right day man, bro, you know dude? Yeah, bro, it’s so crazy my guy, I can’t believe it man.” Gag.

I’ve got more: ever had a friend who said “Oh goodness, yeah, I’ll definitely pray for you!” Or maybe you said that to someone, but you both know it’s not actually going to happen. Y’all going straight home and that prayer is 100% not going up because you’re gonna forget. Or maybe you don’t actually care; you just told them you’d pray because saying “No, sorry, I won’t,” is rude and awkward.

Or maybe you got asked to pray in small group, and you nearly laid an egg; Me? Oh no, I can’t pray in front of these people. *gulp* “Sure,” and then you pray, only to leave the group embarrassed out of your mind.

Regardless where you stand with your experiences over prayer, we’ve got some funny ways to do it. Or not do it.

Every single one of these descriptions of prayer only exists because the pray-er is worried about other people. Think about it – hellfire and brimstone boy isn’t screaming for the tank-top short-shorts girls’ sakes; he wants everybody else to turn and watch. Father-God-Lord-Jesus-Savior-King Man is exhibiting a textbook definition “nervous filler-word” dynamic; he’s worried about what the people listening think so he adds a bunch of words to sound super spiritual. Dropping a promise to pray for someone else stems from making a commitment that you don’t know if you can keep, or that sometimes is a straight-up lie so the other person doesn’t hate you for being a jerk. Anxiety about being bad at prayer is a direct result of worrying about “doing it right” or impressing the other people in the group. If that’s how we’re praying, then who are we actually praying to? Sure as heck doesn’t sound like we’re focused on God very much, if at all.

See, the thing is, that’s exactly what’s going on: when most Christians in 2021’s version of Western Christianity pray, they’re not focused on God; no, they’re aiming at impressing the people who listen.

My friends, this is a dangerous way to pray. And Jesus knows it:

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Matthew 6:5-8 ESV

Jesus says that whoever is praying like this (and he basically describes the first 2 people I mentioned almost verbatim) already has what they’re looking for, and is steeped in deception. The “hypocrites” and the “Gentiles” are the people who pray start to finish with the goal of getting others’ to pay attention to them. In other words, they think their prayer is an opportunity for promotion. Ever met anybody like that? Heck – ever been that person?

These are the people who don’t actually listen to you to hear about you, they only ever care to talk about themselves. They need other people to like them so bad that they feel a compulsion to do and say things that force you to acknowledge them and what they’re doing. Or, out of the same root feelings, they do and say everything they can to get you to focus on something else besides them. This comes in all kinds of packages; from the wild and rambunctious attention-seeker to the anxiety-ridden introvert, every single one of us has been this person. We feel a pressure to perform, and unfortunately, our God-given, abundantly gracious method of communication with the Creator of the Universe gets caught in this crossfire.

But it’s normal for us to be this kind of person now. Romantic couples literally have brands for merch and social media marketing. Individuals, too. There’s a ton of people on social media now who are famous just because they’re famous, and the rest of us feel like we have to be like them, too. We are constantly promoting ourselves. We look around and try to make sense of the world around us based on what we see the people in our circles doing. We think, “Well, all of my best friends have a side-hustle and a personal brand and they’re launching their YouTube channel or podcast or clothing line and their Instagram stories look like so much fun; that’s what I need to be doing. When I get there, I’ll be doing well for myself.”

So we start using other people and things that were never meant for this to get there.

Including God. Including prayer.

Jesus isn’t having it, people. Quit acting like He’s okay with this type of Christianity. Quit playing games.

Don’t believe me? Let’s break down they way Jesus says we should pray:

“Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

Matthew 6:9 ESV

Step 1: “Our”. Jesus assumes that we are praying together. If you get nothing else from this post, get this:

Fake friends promote, but real friends pray. But how do they pray? Clearly not the way we described earlier.

Step 2: “Hallowed be your name.” Hallowed means holy, which means separate or different. Translation? Recognize that God, your Father, is different and that’s good. Acknowledge it. Get your heart in line with it. Nothing else makes sense without it.

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Matthew 6:10 ESV

Step 3: “Your kingdom…Your will.” Drag your need to promote yourself out into the light and slaughter it. Your heart needs what His heart wants. Get that, and you get life, basically. So step #3 is to line up with what God wants for you (I promise it’s better than your wildest imagination).

“Give us this day our daily bread,”

Matthew 6:11 ESV

Step 4: “Give us.” You have and know what we need, God; so we trust you’ll give it to us. Again, He knows better and we get our hearts in line with it.

“and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Matthew 6:12 ESV

Step 5: “Forgive us.” You can’t truly ask for forgiveness without humility; check your pride at the door and own where you’ve messed up with others. I hope you’re noticing a trend here, because Jesus is definitely using one.

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Matthew 6:13 ESV

Step 6: “Lead us.” When’s the last time anybody in 2021 willingly asked somebody else to lead them?

Jesus is trying to over and over again, in every conceivable area of life, hammer this point home:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”

Matthew 5:3 ESV

People who know they’re poor in spirit (AKA they need God, and can’t do life on their own) have no need to promote. They can pray for you, they can pray with you, and in doing so they can make sure your heart and theirs are lined up right next to what God wants for you; to prosper you and protect you, to give you a hope and a future, and to be treated by Him and by others like the image of God that you were made to be.

We gotta stop using our relationship with Jesus to impress other people; it’s making so many of us not want to go to church, and it’s causing us to do really stupid things in the name of God, all because we’re so afraid that somebody out there might not like us. Be honest. Be real. That starts with admitting your own inability to do life and it grows from there to the way you love the people around you.

Stop praying to promote yourself. Get in your prayer closet, plead for God to turn your heart to His, then get out there and live like it’s true with everybody else.

You’ll surprise yourself what kind of person you can be, and what kind of life you can live when this is true of you.

Fake Friends Settle; Real Friends Shine

A conversation about how we determine what’s most valuable.
[5-minute read]

What is the most important thing in your life?

Family? Church? God? Money? Anything else?

How much authority do you give that thing? Like actually. How much does it influence the way you choose to live life?

My guess is, whatever test you’re using to find that answer, Jesus will probably have somewhat different thoughts.

“Do not lay up treasures for yourself on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,”

Matthew 6:19

Jesus opens this section with a warning about our values: be careful where you find the things you call most important, because if you pick anything on Earth, 2 big things make that a problem – 1) it’ll eventually fall apart and/or 2) somebody’s coming after it.

Have you ever found something over 100 years old that has literally zero wear and tear? Yeah, didn’t think so. Nothing lasts forever, not one thing. Your own cells have completely died off and regenerated again and again every 7 years; you’re literally not the same human being physically that you were 7 years ago. If you decide that your house or your car or your fill-in-the-blank thing is the most important thing, don’t be surprised when it eventually falls apart, and your life with it. Even super-expensive jewelry needs upkeep: my wedding ring is white gold. If I don’t take it to the jewelers every six months to get cleaned, it’ll eventually disintegrate so much it’ll literally fall apart, and it’s gold! The overwhelming suffocation to have everyone around you trying so hard to live life a certain way, with a certain image is a feeling I do not like. Yet at the same time, I feel so utterly compelled to go right along with them all and make them think I’m just like them. And while it may feel like these things are the most important thing in our lives at any given moment (believe me, with the housing market in Texas right now, I feel it), Jesus says the investment just isn’t worth it simply on the integrity of the items alone; the things you want will fall apart. But Jesus doesn’t stop there.

I have a friend who went to the Bahamas in the summer between middle school and high school. They had a BLAST; swimming, surfing, even chilling with dolphins at one point. They bought all kinds of souvenirs for their family and friends and flew back to Miami before they made the 2-day trek back to the Midwest. On that trek, they stopped at Olive Garden for dinner, and when they came outside to the pickup truck not 45 minutes later, every single bag they had brought back with them from the Bahamas was gone; stolen, never to be seen again. In the Olive Garden parking lot! Needless to say, they were upset. And they tried as hard as they could to figure out who did it and where they had taken everything, but they never could get it done. Their stuff was gone, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Jesus warns that this is another reason we shouldn’t be valuing things on earth too highly. At any moment, if for no other reason than sin is within their hearts, people can take your stuff and you’ll never see it again. But I think this is deeper than just stuff. Honestly, when’s the last time you felt an overwhelming urge to buy something you shouldn’t, or act some way you shouldn’t, that wasn’t connected to another person?

More often than not, I find myself acting like the people around me and valuing these possessions so highly because I want them to like me. That’s it.

“If they see me in these shoes, they’ll think I’m dirty.”

“If they think I don’t want to go do this thing with them, they’ll think I hate them, which will make them hate me.”

“It really sucks how bad they pick on that classmate/coworker over there. But I mean, he is a little weird and I don’t want to make it look like I don’t like them, too, so I just wont’ say anything.” But If you’ve read the Great Gatsby, you’d know why Nick proves this is wrong, too.

More than anything, we value being approved by people, especially people who look, act, sound, and think like us. And Jesus warns: that kind of treasure doesn’t last, and will be snatched out from under you at any moment. According to Jesus, it just isn’t worth it. The trajectory of your treasure directly determines the health of your heart.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Matthew 6:22-23

Jesus gives us a test. In His words, your eye is the lamp of your body. Lamps in Jesus’s day were essential; without them, homes and other buildings would be drenched in darkness throughout the entire night, and to keep homes cool, windows were not as common as they are now, and they surely weren’t anywhere close to as big. Even during the day, a lamp was a necessary tool to reveal the truth of what was in the home and how to navigate around it all. According to Jesus, whatever goes through your eyes will directly influence the definition of truth and how to navigate it to the rest of yourself. That’s a big deal.

Let’s do a quick comparison: which one do you spend more time thinking about – what others’ opinions are about you or what those people need most right now?

I’ve actually done this poll before. Only 17% of the people I surveyed said they fell more on the “needs” side of the spectrum than the “opinions” side; 12 out of 70. That’s insane. Everyone else admitted they spend more time thinking about others’ opinions of them. I wonder what the numbers would be if we could calculate just how many hours we spend thinking about those opinions. I guarantee you it’s influencing the way we live, the things we buy, and it’s 100% influencing the way we think about and treat each other. No wonder so many people’s lives are so dark and scary, especially on the inside. It’s almost like this way of thinking is a master over us…

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.”

Matthew 6:24

This is the result. If you spend all of your time thinking about what others will think of you, you’re devoted to the master of approval. You’re sitting in sin or in a way of life that is not wise, but not only are you okay with it, you prefer it. Think about what kind of a friend you must be; “Yeah, this is good enough,” you say. “Maybe there’s something better out there for us but I’m good with this right here.” CS Lewis has something powerful to say to you:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

CS Lewis, in The Weight of Glory

I love how Jesus provides the double-edged warning in verses 19-21, because what happens when you do get what you want? If it doesn’t disintegrate in your hands, it may just up and walk away. Like the “cool” person at school that you finally convinced to like you. But you said “Hi,” to their ex in the hallway and now you’re cancelled.

Jesus makes a big point in all of this: when you serve God as your master, and you stop focusing on this need to be liked so much, you literally shine.

“…if your eye is healthy [aka focused on serving the right master], your whole body will be full of light.”

Matthew 6:22

Let’s do one last comparison:

On the one hand, we have the master of Approval. He knows that you desperately want someone to look at you and say “Yes, I like you,” even as a friend, let alone romantically. And he gets a thrill out of watching you work your tail off for it. He also knows how to get your attention. So he pulls all your strings and constantly teases you:

“Oh, just get those shoes. Then they’ll like you.”

“Once you convince them that that girl sent you pictures, then they’ll be your friend. Heck, even better-get her to send them and then you have real evidence you can share with them. She’ll never know.”

“One little sip, you don’t need any more. You do that, then they’ll like you. You’ll be fine.”

Some people have been serving that trash excuse of a master for 70 years. And they regret every single minute of it.

On the other hand, we have the master of Adonai; Yahweh Elohim, the God of the Universe Who is, in and of Himself, a community of love; eternally giving and receiving love in the Spirit on a level we can’t even begin to imagine. This master literally created you, breathed life into your lungs, and loves you so much He straight up died for you, even though you could never deserve it. He wants nothing from you other than an acknowledgment that you cannot do life alone, and when you do so He offers life abundantly, both now and forever, and has myriad examples to back His offer up.

One offers a lifetime of work for approval with no reward, and causes a lot of people to settle for a life of sin and shame. The other offers a lifetime of knowing you’re approved even when you don’t deserve to be, and an eternity of life and abundance even after death; not even death is a problem for these people. That’s awful shiny and pretty, don’t you think?

Seriously, why is this such a hard decision for so many of us?

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”

Matthew 5:3

It really does all come back to this every time; people who known they’re poor in spirit know that they have nothing to bring to the table on their own, which means they can be a friend who is humble. They know that their strength comes from God, who does not break down and decay and will never steal from you. They know that they don’t need to sin to keep people around. That’s attractive; that’s a way of life I want to live; that’s shiny.

People who know they’re poor in spirit know that God is all they have, because God is all they need.

And they know better than anybody, He is WAY more than enough.

Real Friends Show Love; Fake Friends Show Preference

An honest conversation on how we show love.
[6-minute read]

What is love?

Honestly. Think really hard about it before you answer because I bet that whatever you come up with is going to be different from whoever is sitting next to you (if you can even think of an answer – it’s honestly pretty hard for a lot of people).

How do you think a 6-year old would answer this question? Fortunately for you, dear reader, I’ve actually found some quotes from them. Here’s how a few 4-8 year olds describe love:

“I don’t know how to answer that question.” Love the honesty, Little Man. Sometimes I don’t know, either.

“Love feels kind of nice.” I think so, too. Or at least I hope so.

“Love is about happiness.” Copied and pasted straight from a Disney movie script.

“If a boy is mean to girls, that means they have a crush on you.” Honestly, did this come from a 4-year old or a college student?

Sure, these are funny. And I work with middle schoolers, so I can only imagine how they would describe love. But can I be real? I think these kids are describing what the majority of us believe about love in a way that is remarkably more honest than we adults would ever be. A 4-year old doesn’t just “get” what the word “love” should mean (When was the last time you saw a toddler share without being told? That kind of moment goes viral online because it’s so rare). They’re regurgitating what their parents and others around them are telling and showing them. Honestly, how heartbreaking is it to know that this precious little 5-year old girl is already saying things like “boys show that they like you by being mean to you”??? Who told her that? Who’s telling the boys at her school that?

We’re teaching kids this, and yet we wonder why rape culture is still a problem. But I digress.

Honestly, the word “love” is a problem in 2021’s version of Western culture. Why? Because everyone is worshiping the Self above all. Yourself is your highest authority. So love can mean anything to anyone anywhere at anytime and we’re just expected to not only be okay with it but to also figure out everyone else’s definition of love on our own. That sentence was even exhausting to write, let alone live out.

This makes things super confusing when Jesus says this in the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”

Matthew 5:43-44 ESV

Depending on who you ask, Jesus could be saying to make your enemies happy or to vote them into office or feed them, or evidently if you ask that little girl from earlier, to even be mean to them (which is directly counter to his first point???).

Like I said, exhausting.

Friendships, romantic relationships, families, and so many others are falling apart all over the world because nobody is willing to put a foot down and make a definition for love. We don’t want to hurt people, and we don’t want to be seen as being exclusive, but honestly people, you do realize that unless you’re exclusive, you can’t define anything, right? To define something for what it is will by nature exclude whatever it’s not. If I want to tell you what an iPhone is, I have to distinguish it as different and exclusive from an Android and vice versa. Otherwise, everything is the same and nothing matters (And yes, there are people who believe everything is one, but even they can’t practically live that out. Quit playing games, y’all).

So what is love? Because if Jesus is using it like we do, then there’s some serious ambiguity to work through here because I love BBQ sauce and I love my wife but that is nowhere close to the same thing.

Luckily for us, Jesus was not doing that. He spoke in a language called Aramaic, cousin to Hebrew in the same way Portuguese is to Spanish; close, but not the same. The word Jesus most likely would’ve used for “love” here was called “rakhmah”. But when Matthew wrote down the story of Jesus’s life, he did it in Greek. By then, looking back over Jesus’s life and actions, Matthew chose to use the Greek word “agape” here (As did literally every other New Testament author – it occurs 52 times in 1st John alone). What is agape?

The Bible Project puts it really well when they say that agape is “a choice that you make to seek the well-being of people other than yourself” (1). Jesus showed this in everything that He did, and according to Matthew 5, Jesus thinks the ultimate test of your ability to love is determined by how you treat the people you can’t stand, regardless whether your anger with them is justified.

Another way of saying this is that love is “giving someone what they need the most when they deserve it the least.” Sometimes we’re angry with others because they genuinely wronged us, and their treatment of us legitimately deserves judgment. These kinds people are really easy to hate. “You wronged me, so you’re cancelled,” we say. Or we live out; honestly, it doesn’t really matter how it comes out, we all think it.

The definitions the kids gave make a lot of sense when the person you love is someone who loves you. But it is everywhere around us and in us that if someone doesn’t love us back, they’re not worth our time. Showing love to people who could never and will never repay us looks, sounds, and feels stupid.

Don’t even try to convince yourself you’ve never been that person. You probably haven’t been able to make it a full week without being this person even a little bit. I know I sure haven’t. The only people we want as friends or in our family are people who only ever love us back. But like I said earlier, without a standard, not only is this confusing as heck, it’s literally impossible. Someone may very well think they’re showing you love by bringing up a hard truth that the two of you need to work through, but you’ll say it’s not love because it hurts. At the same time, your other “friend” will be asking you to sin to stay friends with them, or at least making things awkward if you try to do life Jesus’s way around them, and you’ll do whatever they want or whatever they’re doing just because you want them to like you.

Honestly, we’re all middle schoolers in our hearts in this way.

I get it. It’s really hard to give someone what they need when they have clearly done many things that 100% disqualify them from any kind of love or grace or blessing. Often, it hurts. Especially when it takes them a long time to figure out what you’re actually trying to do. But do a quick little thought experiment with me for a second;

What if God treated us this way? What if God only loved the people who loved Him first?

Y’all, that world would be terrifying. You know why? You sure as heck didn’t start off your life loving God. You only know you can love Him at all because He showed His love first.

In a world where God waited to show love until we showed it to Him first, chaos would reign, destruction running rampant and pain and evil dominating, totally unchecked. No form of joy, however small, would exist. No happiness would ever light up the darkness, and death would be the unavoidable end for all humanity.

But that’s not what happened.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.”

Isaiah 61:1 ESV

“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

Titus 3:3-7 ESV

Jesus says in Matthew 5 that we need to love, agape, the people who we can’t stand. And I don’t know if you knew this, but Jesus never usually gives a command without giving a why behind it (so if you’re the kind of person who can’t follow a God who requests blind faith from His followers, you can rest assured that the God of the Bible is nowhere close to that kind of God). Look at verse 45:

“…so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”

Matthew 5:45 ESV

Genesis 1, literally page 1 of the Bible, reveals that you and I were made in the image of God by His own hands (1:27). You were made to reflect God to the rest of creation. So why love the people you can’t stand?

Because that’s exactly what God did for you.

Even though your life is full of reasons for Him to hate you, He doesn’t:

“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:7-8 ESV

Jesus’s why when He says to love your enemies is literally so that you will be close to God – so you will fulfill the purpose for which you were made. You exist to love and give the people around you what they need the most, even though they definitely don’t deserve it.

You’ll never know the truth of this unless you choose to live it out. Jesus isn’t asking you to fully wrap your heart around this idea. All He’s asking is that you trust Him to put it into practice anyway. You’ll start to see the fruit as you do. If it wasn’t legit, it would’ve died out a long time ago. But Jesus’s way is still here, still changing lives and changing hearts literally thousands of years after He walked on the dirt of Israel, still as relevant as ever.

The power is in being humble enough to admit you needed help in the first place, not in picking and choosing who gets your love and who doesn’t. But you gotta get past yourself enough at the start to even begin experiencing it.

So, who irks you? Who gets on your last nerve? Go give them what they need. Right now. Help them. Sacrifice something of yourself to do it. See if Jesus was right.

Only you can know for yourself for sure. What will you do?

Dig Deeper

Pressing into our Doubts Can Lead us Straight to Jesus
3 minute read

I remember the first time I ever saw the Matrix: I was probably in middle school, maybe late elementary school, I’m not sure. But the memory of the experience itself is vivid and clear. There’s a lot going on in the Matrix trilogy, and I know a lot of you aren’t Matrix people. I get it. Sci-Fi isn’t for everyone (unless you start talking about the Avengers), so I won’t get into all the details. But there is one thing that I haven’t ever been able to shake.

Through the years, it’s always stuck with me that this idea of an entire world moving and working beneath what I perceive at a first glance absolutely fascinates me. To learn that there is more going on beneath the surface than I originally believed swings the door wide open to adventure, excitement, and all kinds of fun.

I think this is why I haven’t been able to shake it, though: every single day I’m learning that this thought of more to discover waiting for me below the surface of my perception is actually real. It’s everywhere. There is way more going on in the world than what we can see, or otherwise naturally apprehend.

The Bible has been teaching this for millennia, and to a degree, I’ve concurred. Paul says we don’t wrestle against flesh & blood, but spiritual powers. The entire book of Job is about an unseen deal between God & the enemy to test Job. I could go on.

What I’m learning though, is that this “unseen reality” motif is everywhere. Even in the abstract ideas and traditions that we carry on as Christians.

Don’t get me wrong – some traditions carried on by the church are vital, necessary, and sometimes even commanded by Jesus Himself; baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and others like marriage, service to the poor and underprivileged, etc.

But a lot of us have never stopped to ask ourselves why we do what we do. There might be reasons that I tell myself is my motivation for giving to the church, but is it really why I do it? Is it that reason that motivates me, or is there something deeper?

I’m finding that whenever I ask myself “Why do I do that this way?” or “Why do I even do this at all?” What ends up happening is 1 of 2 things:

EITHER:

  • I come to the conclusion that I’m doing what I’m doing for the wrong reasons, so I need to course-correct, and when I do, I fall ever more deeply in love with Him.

OR:

  • There’s an even better, fuller, more satisfying reason in Jesus to do what I do that I had overlooked, or had never been shown before, and I fall ever more deeply in love with Him.

Either way, they both end up in the same place: knowing why I believe what I believe always draws me closer to Jesus. Not once in my life has this ever resulted in growing a dislike for Him in me at all. It always shows Him to be more attractive and captivating then I had previously understood.

This is very difficult for people who have been taught to never doubt. That’s a big cancer in the church across the world that I’m hoping to help remove. Jesus never shuts down doubt, He invites His followers into an experience with Him. Thomas was never shamed for His doubt – He was invited to look at the fact of Jesus’s holes in His hands and side to prove the reality of what He hadn’t yet seen. He just had to dig a little deeper.

For example, why do I believe the Bible is inspired by God?

Answering that question with: “It tells me it is, and I believe it!” is good, but it’s not enough. I wish it were. God gave me a brain that never stops asking “Why?” Thankfully, He’s all about making His glory known, and He does it in ways that are anchored in facts. When I dug deeper into this belief, I found all kinds of fascinating reasons to love the Bible, believing that it came from God alone, through humans. In fact, the very information that shows how the Bible was written and compiled through human means and humans themselves is the very information that has convinced me it is from God alone.

So here’s my challenge: start asking yourself why you do what you do as you live your life. If you have the humility to second-guess yourself in your gut reactions and dig a little deeper into the things that you do, you just might end up right in front of Jesus.

And I’m telling you, there is no where else in the world you would want to be than with Him.

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.

Screen Shot 2016-03-12 at 12.21.38 AM

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.