Apparently for me, the answer to that question is “Man, I really don’t know. Seems like even falling to my death off a cliff isn’t enough.”
Which is really sick and twisted, isn’t it?
It takes some time seeing reason in an accident like mine. Honestly, from the outside in, it looks like a massive, bone-headed stupid mistake, and on my part, it really was. We were on that hiking trip to see the crag at the end of the trail, but I took a detour, made a brash, quick decision to inspect a waterfall halfway up the trail, and ended up at the bottom of a cliff with a shattered foot, elbow, and a face covered in blood. Needless to say, we never made it to the crag.
This is the cliff we were headed to, not the one I fell from.
And I feel like a complete moron, not only because I made that idiotic decision to inspect that cliff, but largely because literally thousands of people have been praying for me in this, for survival on the day of the accident, for healing since, and I can count the times I’ve talked to Jesus in this whole thing on one hand.
What a joke, right?
I wrote a whole blog post about how it happened; how I was ready to go because on the way down I saw no other options for me getting off that mountain than in a body bag, and I figured, “If this is it, Jesus, I guess this is it. Take me home.” And it inspired a lot of people and everybody applauded me. But honestly, since then, I don’t know how many times I’ve actually spent talking to Jesus about this, about life, about Him, but I do know it’s less than five, and for that I am utterly ashamed.
So here I am, lying in bed in my grandparents’ house in Dallas, and I hear Him whisper,
“What’s it gonna take to get you to talk to Me, dude? You should’ve died on that mountain and I got you out of there. You talk about peace, and how you want to find My will in this but then you go trying to find that peace in all the wrong places—timing, lust, logic, even sleep—but you’re so wrong, brother. You’re not going to find peace there no matter how hard you try to make it fit. There’s only one way, and you know it.”
So I’m beating myself up because I know. I know exactly what that one way is, but I’ve ignored it for almost a month. I need to just talk to You. I need to just talk with You.
What I need to do is to pray.
I heard one pastor say that prayer doesn’t do anything. We put so much hope in prayer itself like the praying is gonna make anything happen through its own power. The real power is in Jesus and how He chooses to act.
Well, duh.
But that doesn’t mean that this open line of communication, this connection to the Maker of the Stars is useless. It’s not pointless. He uses it to soothe my heart. He inhabits it to show me His presence in my life in a way unlike any other. Prayer is not me falling to my knees and pleading with teary eyes that He heals me tomorrow, then walking away wondering if He’ll really do it—it’s dialogue. Sometimes it’s just listening to Him. It’s two-way communication, and as a talker, that’s something I need desperately.
So I guess I have to make a choice tonight, and then again tomorrow, and later on tomorrow again, then again, and then the next day, to keep that line of communication open. It’s not a one-time switch-flip that provides a constant dialogue (although I can have that dialogue with Him all day if I really want to). It’s recurring. It’s constantly happening again and again, not constantly happening without interruption.
God help me if I don’t take advantage of this opportunity to keep breathing–if I take it for granted. I sure as heck know I didn’t get here because of my superior knowledge or skills. I’m still here because He wants me to be. So I’d better start talking and see what needs to be done.
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.
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.
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”
1 John 3:1
Do you understand what this means? Do you know what kind of intensity Jesus has used to bring us His freedom and love? John uses the word ‘lavish’ here for a reason–Jesus dumps His love on us like a waterfall over a cliff. He’s swung the gates of heaven wide open and has let Heaven descend on earth into the hearts of His children. When we encounter that love in a real way, He stirs up a wild river–passionate, explosive love for God and for the humans he created.
WHOA that sounds churchy. You know, when I look at that paragraph up there, I’m really tempted to ignore it and close the article I’m reading. It could be this one, or it could be the one I got it from. Either way, to most people, it’s not exactly a flashy, attractive sentence because it sounds like something only Christians would say when they’re at church and even then most of them probably wouldn’t even understand it. And that disheartens me because as true as it may be, that attitude is wrong.
Think about this for a second: people in my generation are flaky. That’s right; I said it–we’re absolutely horrific at keeping commitments. Why do you think we see so many people in our generation getting married and then being completely miserable? Let’s just admit it–we’re plagued. If there’s one sin we struggle with the most as a collective generation, it’s honesty and responsibility to our word. Like Jesus said in the sermon on the mount–we should let our yeses mean yes and our nos mean no.
Except we don’t do that. Like, at all.
We’re wishy-washy. We don’t like commitment. Marriage terrifies people everywhere. I mean, even the word ‘love’ is touchy for a lot of millennials (and don’t think I’m making this all about relationships, because I’m not–they’re just the best examples). But here’s something interesting–when Jesus says, “I love you,” he means it. He means it so much, he actually died because of it.
And now, he’s trying to give us his love. He wants so intensely to give us his love that he gives us moment after moment to accept it and often times shoves it right under our noses in a place we can’t ignore it. And when we finally accept it, and we let him into our lives, he opens heaven wide unleashes a downpour of love that we can’t escape. It engulfs us. It surrounds us. It gives us no other option but him, and honestly we needn’t want anything else anyway–this intensity of love shows us so profoundly how sufficient he really is that it stirs us to a feeling of passionate response, a wild river-like desire to go only one direction at all and that’s right toward him.
Lately, Philippians 3:10 has been the theme of everything around me:
“My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.”
The closer I grow to him, the more he will lavish his presence and his love–or at least the more I will see it clearly anyway.
You may be thinking, “Tyler–what the heck, man? I thought you were saved. I thought you’ve been saved. I thought that all these years you’ve been following Jesus that it’s been legit and it’s been for real. Why the heck are you just now getting baptized?” Well, all of those observations are true. Kind of.
Yeah, I’ve been saved. That definitely happened. Problem is, I said it happened twice before it actually did happen. Once at nine years old, and again at twelve, I told the world that Jesus had saved me. But you see, He hadn’t. Not yet.
I said the prayer (twice), and I listened to what the pastors said over and over but the truth is, my heart never ever changed. Not at first. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I learned what it truly meant to be saved–to have the Creator of the world in your own heart. Not until 15 did I realize even a smidgen what that meant for me.
But by the time I finally decided to do this stuff for real, I was terrified that the church I was in wouldn’t accept me. I was afraid they would see me up there for the third time in six years and say, “Well, here we go again. It’s not legitimate this time but let’s play along and let him have his day anyway.” Looking back, it sounds absolutely ridiculous that my church would act that way (especially now that I know beyond any doubts they wouldn’t have even gotten close to that), but in the moment I was terrified.
I let that fear control me for years. I don’t know how long it was that I stayed in my pew on Sunday mornings because I was shaking inside over what they would think if I decided to waltz up to the front one more time, but what I do know is that eventually the idea of getting baptized left my mind altogether and I forgot to do it. Eventually, another six years slipped away from me. And I know that during most of those six years, I was following the path the Lord was leading me down but the reality is that I can’t fully follow Him and keep his commandments if I don’t do the thing He did as the single most important thing to do first in his ministry: get baptized.
So today I’m proclaiming to the world: I’m a screwed up human being. Sometimes, I don’t even feel human inside because of my guilt and shame but the beautiful thing is that Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross frees me from literally everything. Guilt. Shame. Fear. The stress of figuring out what He wants me to do (He’s pretty clear and gives the answers exactly when He’s ready–plus baptism is a pretty clear indication of at least one thing He’s leading me to right now). All of those have no power over me anymore and the minute I decide to throw all my anxieties on Jesus and let Him sort everything out is the minute I start living in that freedom in a way that I can honestly never imagine.
Next Sunday I’m getting baptized. And it’s because I want to be His friend–to keep His commandments in the hopes that I’m led to know Him more and He be my very best friend in the whole world.
I’m sitting with a friend around my age (anywhere from 18 to 30 years old) and inevitably, (because for some reason I can’t seem to avoid it) the conversation makes its way right on over to politics.
“…and that’s why I think [insert candidate/politician here] is going to do a great job with [issue that led us to politics in the first place],” I conclude. “I mean, honestly, that makes the most sense, right?”
The stare I get from my friend is usually one of utter disbelief–like they’re floored that I have an opinion at all. “Honestly, I don’t even care. None of that stuff affects me. I’m probably not even going to vote anyway; I didn’t in the last election.”
Every time, every single time I get that phrase, it hits me like a ton of bricks. I should be used to it by now but it never fails to surprise me as much as it would if it was Resurrection Morning and Jesus was riding down on a cloud. That’d get me pretty good, too, I gotta say. How can somebody think this way? Like, honestly, what has happened [or not happened] in their lives to lead them to think that in this country, in the United States of America, where we choose our representatives to govern us and we have the power to put people into and remove people from office, it’s cool for them to be complacent and let other people decide who makes the rules?
Here’s the deal: in this country, if the people don’t decide, there’s nobody else left to do it but the government itself, and history has proven that this doesn’t turn out well for the people. And we are the people. So you do the math.
Hopefully by now you can see why this is such an important thing. No? Okay then, let’s make a couple of simple, yet important, observations:
In our government, the people hold the power.The United States is both a republic and a democracy at the same time. This means that as a republic, we elect representatives to govern us in our legislature [a.k.a. government]. As a democracy, we, as citizens, are able to participate in government more freely than citizens of countries that use different kinds of government. We, the people, get to decide who’s in charge of telling us what and what not to do. In return, we get to tell them what and what not to do. It’s a nice balance of power.
Millennials outnumber Baby Boomers.People in my generation, we’re Millennials, if you didn’t know. That’s anybody born from 1982 to 1994 [well, technically. But we’ll include anybody born up to 1998 because they’ll all be 18 and able to vote by next November]. Our population is bigger than the Baby Boomers (the generation that exploded the population almost exponentially due to ‘excessive celebration’ of the victory in World War 2 during the late 1940s and early 1950s [if you know what I mean]). Think about it–the entire nation ‘excessively celebrates’ all at once and that next generation they produce literally doubles the nation’s population. Quite a few people, if you ask me. Millennials? Yeah, we even outnumber them. Today, there are around seventy-four million Baby Boomers and seventy-five million Millennials. Say that five times fast. Granted, we’re only up a single million, but as time goes on and baby boomers pass away, that gap has nowhere to go but up. Our voting power as a generation is ridiculously stronger than we like to think it is.
Government actually affects our lives, big time.I feel like I’m gonna have to prove this one to you, but that’s fine. Most people don’t understand the weight of this one at all so we kind of have to start from scratch. Check out this excerpt from governmentisgood.com that shows this point pretty well:
9:00 a.m. While at work, your rights and wellbeing are constantly protected by a wide-ranging network of federal and state laws. The Occupation Safety and Health Act works to protect you from unsafe and unhealthy work conditions. Federal law protects you from workplace discrimination based on race, gender, religion, national origin, or disability. State laws may also require your employer to purchase worker’s compensation insurance so that you are covered in case you are injured on the job. 12:45 p.m.After lunch, you walk to a nearby ATM and get some cash out of your account – and your money is actually there. That wasn’t always true during the economic depression of the 1930s when many banks failed. But your money is safe — as it was during the recent financial and banking crisis — because the government guarantees your deposits. In addition, those pieces of paper you put in your wallet are only worth something thanks to the federal government. Our monetary system is entirely a government creation, and the value of money is only maintained because the government regulates the money supply and protects it from counterfeiters. Quite an important service, really.
It’s not hard to see how much government really affects us–at every level. Although the Federal government seems huge and far away and kind of illusionary as far as practicality goes, it’s not. It decides many things for the country as a whole, and whatever state we live in, we’re still in that same country.
We Choose Who Makes Those Regulations and How They Do It.Like I said earlier, the USA is a democracy and a republic at the same time. People in the country (that’s us) get to choose how things go. But there are over 300 million Americans, so getting us all in the same room to make decisions is kind of a problem, so we elect representatives to go for us and represent our ideas and values in the government (that’s how we’re a republic). Do you know what happens when the government gets free reign to have offices filled by whomever it wants and is allowed to do whatever it wants? This:
In these nations (Nazi Germany, Fascist North Korea, and Communist China), the government has supreme and total power. Nobody tells them what to do, and as a result they get to do whatever the heck they want. Honestly, I don’t know why anybody would want to live in a place where life is like this. Sure, the government could be benevolent and lead in good ways, that possibility isn’t off the table, but history has proven that this has virtually never ever happened. Ever.
So here’s the deal: in the last midterm election, only 19% of voters ages 18-24 voted. That’s ridiculous. We outnumber any other generation in our country and we have the most power to see what we want happen yet we’re the least represented in the polls, and it’s nobody’s fault but our own.
So when the next election rolls around in November of 2016, and we all get together to figure out who’s going to lead us next, get up off your butts and join us. If we don’t, and if we make not voting a habit, then we’re all headed for a bright and fun future (not).
Students at most St. Louis universities on the Illinois side of the river know how much of a struggle it is to find something fun to do in the Metro East, and the idea of heading over to the city to try and have a good time seems so daunting and expensive because of all the touristy things to do. But the reality is, St. Louis is a city full of cheap/free ways to kill a Friday night or Saturday afternoon and the best part is they’re all awesome. So here’s a quick list of ways to see St. Louis on the tight budget of a college student.
A one-way ticket for the MetroLink rail system is only $2.50. You can get anywhere in the city and back to your starting point for just $5. Students can get a semester pass for $175 and it’s good from August-December or January-May. This isn’t really much of a discount ($175 without the pass gets you 35 round trip rides–riding twice a week will last you a whole semester), but it does offer you the opportunity to pay for your tickets upfront, plus it can save you time at the station (sometimes the ticket machines have trouble taking cards).
The Delmar Loop is a street in St. Louis’s University City neighborhood full of shops, restaurants, concert venues, and more. It’s perfect for wandering around on a clear afternoon when you have no clear plans for something to do. There’sFitz’s restaurant (where they home-make their own root beer and it is amazing), Mission Taco Joint–a specialty taco restaurant with interestingly unique menu options (try the Carne Asada Fries!), Vintage Vinyl record store where the place is literally stuffed with records decades old (and also where a lot of artists who visit St. Louis for shows will do album signings!), Avalon Exchange thrift store only accepts clothes of certain brands/conditions and sells high-quality items for ridiculously cheap, Blueprint Coffee, which sells their own brews and beans ground on-site, the Pageant, a concert venue/nightclub (attend responsibly, kids), and a ton more.
That’s right–the zoo has 100% free entry! You can literally walk right through the gate and spend a day with all the awesome animals. The St. Louis Zoo is right in the middle of Forest Park, so the zoo itself is set up quite like a city park as well–lots of trees, not a ton of sun when it’s hot, and many indoor exhibits, too. It’s open year-round and includes a ton of incredible exhibits for hundreds of species of animals, including Asian Elephants, King Penguins and Puffins (which you can almost touch! But don’t! Guests must keep their hands to themselves here), a brand-new Polar Bear exhibit, Hippos (which are just two inches of glass away from landing right on top of you), gorillas that come up to the glass just to hang out with you, and hundreds more!
This little burger joint sits on the corner of 7th and Chouteau. It only has about 10 seats, and when it’s busy, it’s crazy, but most of the time, you’re only joined by another guest or two, and the people behind the counter are always great for conversation. It’s open 24 hours and it’s always dirt cheap. But the quality of the food is anything but dirty.
Ever tried indoor rock climbing? If you haven’t, you can now! For right around $25, you get equipment and all-day climbing at this awesome revamped warehouse in South City. The historic building that Climb So Ill (Climb Southern Illinois) owns is beautiful–restored on the exterior to its original architectural state and completely re-purposed on the interior to house dozens of climbing wall routes. Don’t have a friend who’s belay-certified? No worries! Climb So Ill has plenty of auto-belays for anyone to climb, regardless of their experience level. This is a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon any time of year!
Forest Park is located between Downtown and the Central West End neighborhoods of St. Louis. It’s massive 1,371 acre footprint contains tons of free things to enjoy. There’s the zoo, the SLAM (St. Louis Art Museum), the Missouri History Museum, the Muny (this one’s not free), and the St. Louis Science Center. The Jewel Box (in the photo to the left) is probably the most visually stunning attraction in the park, and although admission is $1 (when there’s not a wedding going on), if you can make it on Monday or Tuesday from 9:00AM to noon, admission is free. On top of all the man-made attractions within the park, there are tons of awesome natural wonders to admire as well. The park contains over 45,000 trees and dozens of trails (paved, gravel, and dirt) to run/bike/hike on.
Coffee fan? Perfect. Not so much? Not a problem! The St. Louis coffee shops city-wide offer a ton of opportunities for coffee lovers and haters alike. Companies like Sump and Risegive coffee drinkers the opportunity to drink some seriously well-crafted brews, while other shops like The Mud House and Kayak’s offer unique yet calming atmospheres that are perfect for studying or just chilling out, regardless of the degree to which you love/hate espresso.
The MetroLink can’t get you to this one, so if you don’t have a car, you’ll need to ride with a friend, but this park is one for the books. Not only is there a massive cave that was once used as a bar during Prohibition, but there are also numerous hiking trails, limestone bluffs, and biking trails to spend the day on. There are also a few rumors that certain areas of the park are haunted, so it’s especially fun to visit around Halloween.
South of downtown, there’s a massive, mile-long wall that runs along the Mississippi River. It was built to keep rising flood waters from washing into the city and acts to this day as a levee to keep the city dry. On the land side, however, is an artistic wonder, the likes of which are not seen in most other places. From the very point where the wall begins for at least a mile, maybe more, is graffiti. Everywhere. From the ground to the top, the whole wall is covered in breathtaking art. Once a year at Paint Louis, artists from all over the city come together to repaint the wall, so the images you see are constantly changing. And it’s totally free. It’s a tad tricky to get there, but if you just follow Chouteau street towards the river from the Eat Rite diner, you’ll eventually hit a gravel road (S. Wharf Street) that sits at the foot of the wall. Turn right, drive on, and enjoy.
Have a friend with a car? After you spend some time at Cliff Cave, you can head north of the Metro East in Illinois to see the ridiculous amount of Bald Eagles in Alton. During the winter (late December to mid-February), the eagles come out in full force, and Alton meets them with equal fervor. There are guided eagle tours, events all around the city, and a ton of other ways to see the magnificent national birds as they hang out near the Mississippi River.
This northwest suburb of St. Louis is located right on the Missouri River, and is stuffed full of history. The historic Main Street neighborhood of St. Charles is most alive at Christmas, where from the week after Thanksgiving until the day itself, Christmas characters roam the streets with collectors’ cards so that kids and adults alike can have some fun trying to snag all their cards and meet every single one. The best part? All of them are in character 100% of the time and they make the place feel like Christmas in 1900. Less capitalistic, more charming. Warmer, even if it’s only 10 degrees outside.
St. Louis is a sports town. There’s no other way about it. But sometimes sports tickets can have hefty pricetags, and can discourage college students from attending. But websites like StubHub have opportunities that a lot of other sites don’t, and from this site it’s possible to get St. Louis Blues hockey tickets for as little as $11. Of course, they’re probably close enough to touch the ceiling, but honestly, who likes to sit on the boards at hockey games anyway? Up top you can actually see the puck!
For just $22 you can get 3 games of laser tag in one of the world’s largest (if not the largest) laser tag arenas in the world, on the Illinois side of the river in Belleville. With a medieval theme, the arena at the Edge is enormous and is separated into four distinct areas. Each of these areas has a ton of places to hide, and the circumnavigating the whole thing just once may take you the whole game. It’s a great way to spend a Saturday night with your friends!
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.
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.”
“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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s surprising to me how easy it is to forget what Jesus has done for me.
That sounds ridiculous, right? The perfect, holy, glorified God of the universe became a man and lived sinlessly only to die in my place and be raised from the dead so that I could live with Him forever. How on earth could I forget that? That’s like, the most profound thing to ever happen since like, ever, and to forget that would be virtually impossible.
Except it’s totally possible.
My life has been a constant roller-coaster–twisting around in every direction, while at the same time soaring up or crashing down or completely flipping upside-down–it’s been crazy. But two things that have been constant since the very beginning are that I am a sinner, feeling like the big shot in my life and being able to tell God how I’m gonna do things even though the themes of that attitude are totally false, and that in spite of that, God loves me enough to have sent His Son to nullify the crazy high payment that attitude costs me. It doesn’t matter what ridiculousness happens around me, good or bad–what will never change is that those two statements are 100% true. But my mind likes to fool me and tell me the opposite.
Paul knew the Ephesians were going through the same thing. Most of his letters were to specific people or churches who were dealing with a very particular problem that was plaguing them or the people around them and were attempts at correcting that behavior/solving that problem. Ephesians? Not so much. Ephesians isn’t a letter that addresses a specific problem. Instead, it’s a letter that attempts to avoid future problems by restating to the Ephesians what Christ has done for them through His sacrifice and the Holy Spirit and laying out for them what applying those truths to their lives would look like.
So Paul writes this letter, and he wastes absolutely zero time getting to the punch. Verse one just says who the letter is to, but verse two starts a 3-chapter-long exhortation of Jesus and what he has done for us. Three. Whole. Chapters. And the coolest part is, he tells the whole story under the context of glorifying the Father (i.e. God is the subject of the whole deal) rather than focusing on us. He constantly uses phrases like, “God…has blessed us,” “He chose us,” “He made known to us,” etc. etc. etc. It’s everywhere. God really wants us to know that this story does not focus on us, but rather, it focuses on Him and what He has done for us.
In verses 15-17 of chapter 1, Paul says this:
“For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease
giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; that the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit
of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.”
Paul says, “I know you’ve chosen to follow Jesus–I get that. And because I get that, this is what I’m praying for you: that God would give you wisdom to know what He wants and revelation to know who He is. Neither of these are possible if you don’t know Jesus. So because you do, that’s what I want in your life.” And consequently, it’s what God wants in our lives, too.
Now the coolest part is, these two ideas point back to one specific place, and it’s amazing. If God wants His children to know Him and to know what He wants in their lives, where do they need to look to find those two things?
Scripture. God loves His children enough to allow us to choose for ourselves what we will do in many areas of our lives, but if we’re not following His will in those choices, things are going to get scrappy real fast. The Gorilla Glue that fixes everything though is that His word is stuffed full with constant reminders and reiterations of what His will is for our lives: to bring glory to His name and to do so both within our hearts and outside our hearts to those around us. Colossians 3:17 says, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”
How can we do that without first knowing Who exactly He is? How can I speak to my roommate of a God who is sovereign if I haven’t first looked to scripture to see where He has been sovereign in my own life? How can I accurately portray His love if I first haven’t let Him love me like He wants to?
Paul wants the Lord to give the Ephesians a spirit of wisdom and revelation. God wants us to have a spirit of wisdom and revelation. Jesus supplies us with what we need to live not just physically, but spiritually as well. The Ephesians, at that time, didn’t have 100% of the scripture we have today. They just had the Old Testament. But now, scripture has come full circle. The Word of God is complete, perfect, and just waiting to show you and me who God is through Jesus and His life here among us.
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Ty Hirsch 