Category: Old Testament

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.

Priceless Bags of Dirt

He doesn’t make the darkness disappear; He makes it bow to Him.

5-minute read

I hate that I have to start with this, but there’s a huge Avengers: Endgame spoiler in this so if you haven’t seen it….

You get the drill.

Someone very close to me posed a rather pertinent question this morning:

“I struggle believing that God could be good–like, why do so many bad things happen to good people? Why do my family members experience death and sickness at the absolute least opportune times? Why do they have to experience this? If He’s good, why wouldn’t He intervene?”

I don’t agree that people are inherently good (This article from last month highlights school shootings in the US alone. Not to mention the 27+ million slaves worldwide, the refugee crisis and what’s causing it, international poverty levels, pollution, and so much more. Left to roam free, humanity is destructive. Haven’t you seen Avengers: Age of Ultron?). And while that might be true, the question stands: If God honestly is good and is love, then why would He let so many bad things happen? Why are more than 95,000 children murdered each year (not including abortion), 56% of them by their own parents? Why do 9.1 million people globally die of starvation each year? Why was a 5-year-old boy thrown off the 3rd-floor balcony at the Mall of America? Why did my college pastor’s son get diagnosed with Trisomy-18 in-utero and only survive 15 days outside the womb?

If He’s good, where is He? Why such pain? Why such heartache? Stress? Why?

Honestly I don’t know. “Just trust that it’s part of God’s plan” is an answer I’m not fully satisfied with. I know that He allows some things to happen for reasons we can’t understand. The book of Job explains this much. Like, sin has broken the world, and this is how we experience it personally. I get that. But why would He allow those specifics? I don’t know.

But am I supposed to? I don’t know about that either. Would I really be satisfied if I got those answers? Probably not. I think if God told me everything I wanted to know, I’d never follow Him into the darkness. Kinda like Tony Stark and Dr. Strange’s “1 in 14,000,605”. Tony never would’ve snapped in Endgame if Stephen would’ve told him he’d have to in Infinity War.

What I do know is this: all God has ever done is take that dirt in my life and the peoples’ around me and has made beautiful, wonderful, jaw-dropping things out of it.

Think about it: God made so many things that are intricately beautiful: mountains, rivers, New Zealand, Texas sunsets, diamonds, gold, wildflowers, and the Grand Canyon. But out of all those amazing things, do you know what He chose to use when He made you and me?

Dirt.

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. –Ephesians 2:10 NLT

Do you see that? His masterpiece. Of all the things God created, we are His crown jewel. In everything He created, He values not one thing higher than humanity. And He used the last part of His creation anybody wants to be a part of except sometimes 2-year-old boys (not exactly at the peak of their goodness if you know what I mean).

I’ve yet to encounter even the mention of a culture that sees dirtiness as a virtue. Even the Bible uses that symbolism to describe so many negative aspects in life. Yet God took that dirt and made the one and only object of His affection. You have worth. You have value. Yeah, you’re dirt. But you’re His dirt. And He says you’re priceless.

He’s taken my lustful thoughts and fantasies (dirt, by all accounts–they’ve hurt the woman who will be my wife in 22 days, my mother, my father, my roommates, my bosses and workplaces, the women around me, and so many others) and He is using them, right now, to free other men. He’s taken my drive for being right and succumbing to anger and directed them toward good, toward a drive to be a faithful husband, father, brother, and son.

He did it with Abel. He’s doing it with family members of mine who are dealing with chronic illness. He’s done it with Peter, Paul (ON PAUL, HOLY COW READ THIS OMG), Jim Elliott, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, AW Tozer, Augustine, and so many more.

In 1st Peter 4:12, Peter says “quit being surprised by the dirt. Instead, trust your Faithful Creator” (ATV-Abridged Ty Version). He’s not just the Creator because of Genesis 1 & 2. He never stopped. Trust Him; it will lead to absolute, unending, fully-satisfied, & complete joy. Let Him in.

He doesn’t make the darkness disappear; He makes it bow to Him.

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

 

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.

Manasseh & Ephraim

It’s crazy how God brings to light the progress He’s made in our lives. I mean, what He shows us is intense enough but the way in which He does it deserves some serious screen time, too.

In Genesis 41:51-52, Joseph names his first two sons. He calls the older one Manasseh, which means “God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household.” Ouch. What a name: “Hey, God Made Me Forget My Family and Every Way They Wronged Me, take out the trash!” The younger one got Ephraim, or, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Significantly happier, that’s for sure.

Now, Joseph had a totally awful ending to an otherwise 100% perfect childhood, as far as I’m concerned. Like, he was literally his dad’s favorite. I know that’s not the healthiest parenting method, but it was what Jacob’s family was doing and it worked for them for quite a while.

But then it crashed and burned. 

Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

Jacob loved Joseph so much more than his other boys that he had a coat made for Joseph that was super expensive. Do you know how much it probably cost to include that much colored dye in that fabric? Probably quite a few goats, I’d imagine. I mean, the whole reason purple was considered a royal color was because its dye was so dang expensive. Jacob definitely dropped a pretty penny on that coat, and I’m pretty sure that’s what set the other boys over the edge.

Jacob sent Joseph to go check on his brothers and when they saw him still coming from far away, they started planning to kill him. They probably had plenty of time considering how starkly the coat must have contrasted with everything else in the desert.

The end result of their plans was that Joseph’s brothers let him get all the way to him and then they beat the tar out of him, ripped his coat to shreds and threw him into a well. Except this well was dry, so it was pretty much just a hole. And as if that’s not enough, after a while, they came back for him, and they gave him a short moment of hope that they’d actually felt some remorse and were coming to make things right by dragging him out of the hole (which they did do–not feel remorse, but they did drag him out). But immediately they stabbed that hope right in the chest by selling him to slave drivers.

And I thought my family had issues.

BP1014LOCAL_Diegel_MtHunger

But in Genesis 41, when Joseph names his boys, he’s in a pretty awesome position. At this point, he’s come through slavery, risen through the ranks of Egypt and reached the point where Pharaoh literally told him “Nobody is going to do so much as take a single step without your say so” (41:44). There is literally no human being more powerful than him except Pharaoh himself and even then Pharaoh stays out of most everything. That’s huge. But it’s not all, either–Joseph is in a place in life where God is all that matters to him.

What kind of random pocket of air did I just pull that out of? No random one: it’s right in Manasseh’s own name. Think of it this way: Joseph went through all the trash that followed his brothers’ ridiculousness at that hole focused on the endgame that was God and His steadfast love. Because of that, the Lord blessed Joseph tremendously–so much that he’s the #2 (more like #1.5) guy in all of Egypt. And not only that, but God has blessed Joseph with the ability to not let crazy stuff like his insane brothers deter him from trusting God. So now, in the light of Joseph’s entire life, Manasseh means much more to him than simply forgetting about the evils of his past.

What does this mean for us? Simple: When my focus is on Jesus and nothing else, everything fades away, even the ridiculous trash of my past. He is the only important thing.

But wait! There’s more!

Once Joseph was sold into slavery, his life didn’t suddenly become peachy keen. He was a slave for years, and even though he escalated to work for the Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, he was still a slave, and after that, he was imprisoned for two years straight for something he never did, constantly hoping that the people he met at the beginning of his imprisonment would remember how he helped them and ask Pharaoh to free him, too. But that never happened. Not until two years later.

Sounds like Joseph was living the dream, right? (there’s a pun there if you look hard enough for it)

But even after all of that madness, despair, and downright scary stuff, he still served. God preserved him, and not only that, He elevated him to the highest position in existence at the time, and in that position, as well as every position before and after it, He made Joseph incredibly fruitful. Because Joseph let God use him fully, the entire nation of Egypt and the countries that surrounded it were able to be provided for during the seven years of drought. On top of that, Joseph had children, which was a big deal back then as well.

So, today, this is my prayer, and I hope it’s yours, too: “Jesus, lead me to constantly be living in a state of Manasseh; where Your love and Your glory are all I need. Let me focus on them so intently that everything else fades away. And lead me to Ephraim, Lord. Give me a fire and a desire to be used by You in such a way that I am marvelously fruitful. Use me to be an abundance for You.”

What do the Heavens Say?

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” –Psalm 19:1-6 ESV

It’s ridiculous how close you can get to the Lord when you’re surrounded by nothing but His outright creation.

Sure, technically everything is His since He creates the things we use to create other things but when there’s not a single thing around you that was placed there by a human being the feeling you get is surreal.

Capture4

People have been crying out against America recently. Our consumerism and selfishness and removal from God and his statutes by choice are driving us in the wrong direction, evidently. They say that we’ve abandoned our foundations in scripture. They say we’ve fallen off the wagon spiritually. They say that our political leaders need Jesus if anything good is ever going to come from this country. Personally, I think all three notions are rather flamboyantly ‘off the deep end.’

For millennia, humans have done nothing but push God to the back burner, and sometimes knocked Him completely off the stove. In fact, we even killed Him at one point (albeit He submitted Himself willingly, but we still did the act). So it’s really no surprise  to me that the people of America, who are, in fact, simply humans, are not exactly savvy to the idea of a God that even exists, let alone one Who would die for them. I don’t believe Americans are abandoning any kind of commitment they  made centuries ago, because the humans we have in America today are not the same humans we had in America in 1776. The humans of America today are a byproduct of a culture that never presented them with the real Jesus in the first place. Their opinions on Christianity and a large part of their dissonance with it stem heavily from a generation before them that misrepresented Jesus within their homes and showed them rather poorly how much He actually does love us. So why are we surprised when they want nothing to do with Him?

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As a self-proclaimed outdoorsman, who is fanatically in love with nature and the beauties and magnificence that it holds, I’ve had a few opportunities to inspect my faith within the frame of the outdoors and the raw creation of God at its root (no pun intended lol). In my own life, I’ve noticed something quite profound: when I take time to get away and just explore nature, rest in my hammock and read some scripture, or just plain be in the wild, it’s easier for me to see my connection to God. That might sound kind of new-agey or weird but honestly, I can’t ignore it. When I subtract myself from the hectic equation of the city and get into the woods I feel closer to Jesus.

Don’t get me wrong–my physical place on earth has nothing to do with how close Jesus actually is to me in my life–He’s always right by my side and is never ever going to leave me (Romans 8:31-39). That is certain. But I can’t deny that in the wild I see Him standing next to me much more clearly than I do otherwise. Distractions are removed, stress is alleviated, if only for a moment,  and I’m left with a mind that is free to search deeply for His teaching at this period of my life, to learn of Him more and His love for me, too.

As a result, the situation I find myself in begs for me to apply what I’m learning from Him directly. And when I think about Him in the light of nature, I can’t ignore what I see: He is glorious! He is magnificent! He is ridiculously creative! He cares enough about me to give me a beautiful sunset and a stinking awesome cliff to watch it from on the weekend I celebrate my birthday. His love extends much further than anything we could imagine.

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So it’s easy to see the logic that people who are criticizing humans in America of leaving God are following. In simpler times, when technology and distractions in infinite forms weren’t screaming for our attention, people felt closer to God. They saw their connection to Him much more clearly than many thousands (millions?) do today. That doesn’t mean that we’re abandoning anything, not even close. People have always and will always deny their Creator until the second He returns and makes them declare Him as Lord. But at the same time we can’t deny that engulfed by His creation, we see His face much more clearly.

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” –Psalm 19:1-6 ESV

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Bloom (& Make Fruit) Where You’re Transplanted

I’ve got a lot going for me.

If I’m being honest with you, I can’t hold that back. The Lord has blessed me in a bajillion different ways: I’m going to school for literally 1/10 of the cost of most Americans. I’m pursuing a degree in a field that I stinking love. I have a family full of people who love me to death. I have a job at one of the greatest locations of one of the most efficiently-run and highest-rated companies in the world, and I’m being trained to work in the department of that company in which I originally wanted to work the most. I have friends who love me and are there to support me and help me when I’m down. I had the craziest opportunity to serve the Lord at Sky Ranch as a counselor this past summer. And above it all I have a Savior who loves me so much He literally died for me. And you’d think with all that going for me, it’d be pretty easy to stay peppy.

But it’s not.

I feel like I should be somewhere else. Specifically? Sky Ranch. If I were able to describe how wonderful the summer of 2015 was, I would do it, but its brilliance was so beyond my ability to comprehend that to try and describe it would do nothing but drag it down. The Lord moved in such a magnificent way–it was, and still is, impossible for me to recall it all, let alone describe any of it adequately. I found a new kind of home in Van–one where the people are constantly pushing each other toward the Cross and where Jesus is proclaimed in literally everything that happens. That kind of community doesn’t happen often. In fact, it rarely happens at all, which is why coming back to St. Louis and being out of that community directly is hitting me so intensely.

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Don’t get me wrong–I’m still connected. GroupMe can be a curse of an app at times but when you’re 700-1,000 miles away from everyone, it makes a huge (good) difference. I don’t feel like I abandoned anyone or that anyone abandoned me–it’s simply that the Lord’s time for me at Sky is over, for now. He closed the gates for the summer of ’15 and I have to be okay with that until He reopens them for me in the summer of ’16. Problem is, I’m totally not okay with that. I miss my Sky family. I miss the beauty of seeing a child’s eyes light up when you tell him how proud you are of him when he finally listens and shows you Jesus in his actions. I miss the joy of watching my boys step up and take leadership when they were asked to, or maybe even when they were not, and seeing them be the spiritual leaders Jesus wants them to be. I miss the brand-new fire in a young man’s eyes when he decided to follow Jesus and be a child of the king. I miss the beautiful, yet at the same time horribly ugly, harmony that the staff had as we tried to scrap together our utmost for His highest and serve Him well. I miss Sky Ranch. But Jesus doesn’t have me there right now.

He’s got me in St. Louis, in a city where racial issues and poverty are tearing the fabric of society apart and are likewise showing the kids of the city the absolute worst example of manhood and womanhood that they could possibly see; in a school where His name just isn’t spoken unless it’s a joke or an exclamation, and the majority of the students know absolutely zero of His love for them and the reality of His deity. Looking at those two alone should motivate me enough to live on mission and be excited for the calling I have here, but I’m struggling. I’m failing.

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If you’ve made it this far, I apologize for the depravity of my tone. I know it sounds like I feel more miserable than any person who’s ever lived, and to be honest, sometimes I feel that way. But the reality is that as I write, I can honestly acknowledge that I know this desire to be at Sky Ranch right now is a distraction. It would be one thing if I was simply excited for next summer, which I am, but that’s not all. I want to be there now, but that’s not where the Lord wants me at this present moment, so it is therefore a distraction. There are at least 2 major reasons Jesus wants me to serve Him here specifically and to desire serving Him elsewhere so strongly would be a foolish mistake.

“And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Esther 4:14

This one verse is gonna have to be my life song for the next two semesters if I want to be the vessel that Jesus wants to use me as. Esther was dedicated to serving the Lord. And by dedicated I mean 1,000,000,000,000 percent. This chick was on FIRE, and in this moment, she was starting to lose her flame. Not because she didn’t want to serve God, just because she wanted to serve Him in a different way than He wanted her to. That’s just as dangerous as not serving Him, because if the enemy can get our focus on the wrong thing, whether we be motivated by service to Him or not, he’s already won.

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The point is this–I was planted in Texas for 3 months. That much is true, but now I’ve been transplanted and I need to either bloom here and produce fruit or shrivel up and die. The only real answer is the former, but I’m not gonna be able to just make it happen. I’m going to need to empty myself, beg Jesus to scrape out my desires and fill me with nothing but His. Honestly there’s nothing I can do to focus myself except plead with the Lord to pour out His love for these people into me. If I want to bloom where I’ve been transplanted, all I can do is let Him work.

When that happens, miracles will occur.