Monday is for Morons: 02-20-2012

The Gospel is for you!

Do you believe it?

It is a fact, so.... deal.


Let's pretend for a moment you have a best friend, he or she is THAT person. You are two peas in a pod, you know each other more and better than anyone else. You don't have to finish one another's sentences because who wants that, really? You WOULD do anything for this person. You've experienced much of life together, gone through the fun and the easy and the tough and terrible.

What if the hardest situation and circumstance came two days ago. Your amigo in arms needed you the most, more than ever before.... and you completely abandoned them; you left your best friend in the whole world out to dry. They needed your presence and you were not where on the map; they needed your words and you were silent; they needed you and you were purposely running away?

Let's pretend your best friend is God.

The Apostle Peter didn't have to pretend, he owned this scenario; he lived it. He is the reality of this idea, its fulfillment. Peter--the rock!--told Jesus, 'Everyone else may leave you when the crap hits the fan but not me, not this guy.' It was not long after that Jesus was taken capture, tortured and killed and Peter was found in the dark, cold night writhing in bitter weeping and feeling like he betrayed the world in leaving Jesus' side. Can you imagine the thoughts that might have run through Peter's head? He confessed earlier that Jesus was it, that Jesus was the son of God, the long awaited Messiah who'd save the world! He heard the voice of God affirming these facts too. And he did not have the moxie to say he even knew Jesus, let alone die with him.

You may have a sense of this in your own life as well. You feel that your sin is another spit in the face of God. You think, 'If I REALLY loved God I would not keep failing and sinning!'

Sometimes I'm surprised that it was Judas and not Peter who ended up killing himself. To think of the guilt and depression which engulfed Peter....too much it seems.

Some days later Peter and the boys came to shore from sailing. As Peter stood on the cool sand, the smell of his lineage flowing through his nostrils he heard his future... his present; Jesus made sure that Peter knew that the God whom he betrayed loved him.

This is for you. This is the Gospel. Your sins are many, God's grace laughs at them because the punishment for those sins has already been paid for in Jesus' death on the Cross.

Monday is for Morons: 12-12-2001

I woke up to the insistent dribbles of rain forcing their way to ground. Not only was it raining, but it is almost cold enough to make snow. What a lousy combo. I don't know about you but on a day like this I'd rather sit around a fire and drink something hot as I engulf myself into a great read... NOT go outside and do something.

Remember John in the New Testament? Not Jesus' brother who probably wrote 5 books of the Bible; the other one, the one who dressed like Tarzan mixed with an Eskimo and baptized people. Well he was put into prison and knew things would probably not end terribly well for him. I imagine him in some feces infested cell, darkened by some Mid-Eastern night, wondering about that guy everyone was calling Jesus: 'I wonder if he really is it; I wonder if he really is the one we have all been waiting for.'

Maybe you are wondering the same thing. Maybe you you're just feeling . . . bleh. On a cold, raining day it is easy to feel blasé. Well John, instead of wondering until his head fell off, sent some of his dudes to go ask Jesus if he was 'it,' the Messiah Israel was waiting for. Jesus answered them by telling the messengers, 'Report back to John what you yourself are seeing. I heal the corrupted and I preach good news to the poor.'

Jesus is the Messiah not only Israel, but the whole world, YOU, have been waiting for. It is okay to have blasé Mondays because Jesus is come. And for those who would come to HIM with their broken-down lives full of disgusting and many sins he will forgive. He has footed the bill already. And he will continue to do so for all time.

Don't let the day moderate your heart, go to Jesus who is full of mercy.

Monday is for Morons: 12-05-2011

The weekend has conceded. The week greets you. Hopefully this realization isn't surprising--cause you're probably late to wherever you need to be--and hopefully this remembrance isn't too depressing.

Sure, it may have been a lousy weekend. Maybe a lousy week. Maybe a lousy month or so . . . . /year. That's okay. You're allowed to feel glum, I promise. But let's remember today what the opening of Psalm 118 says, 'Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.'

Why give thanks to God? Because if you are a follower of Jesus, his son, you are loved by him. The love that God has for his people, his children is one that doesn't go out, one that never shrinks, his love is always as intense as when you first realized it, as hot as when it first came out of the oven. You have sinned a lot, me too. But we can still follow God, we can still turn back to him . . . only because his love is more durable than that.

As the song goes, his love 'will not let me go.' Do you believe that? You may fail, but God's love is there for the taking. Always. You cannot sin so big that God will forsake you, no! We hate sin so much BECAUSE he loves us so much. Our sin does not have the final say, God's mercy does.

Monday is for Morons (Thanksgiving Special): 11-21-2011

Thanksgiving is coming. Thanksgiving time can be incredible! You see family. You hang out with friends. You get relax and eat great food until you're queazy. Watch some football or parades. Go shopping with a bunch of angry people who refuse to go shopping until that notoriously dark Friday.

Yet for all the same reasons it can be the most troubling time. A few years back I experienced my worst Thanksgiving. I had to work a half-day on Wednesday and a full-day on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It was cold. I was alone in my entire apartment complex. I had nothing to do. I was away from my family. And to make it more sad I had borrowed my cousins violin and so I played it outside, alone, in the cold, in the dark whaling the safest sounding notes I could figure out. It was pathetic! I started, as is normal in these situations, to feel sorry for myself. But I really was just sad I was in the state I as.

IT is times like these (and maybe the same for you coming up) that such a reminder of WHO we are and to WHOM we belong is a necessary and 'okay, I can keep going on and make it through' thing. The Apostle Paul in his book to the Colossians writes, 'You have died, your life is hidden with Christ in God.' (3.3) If you are a follower of Jesus you know that you do not deserve any kind thing from God--if you are not a follower of Jesus I hope you soon realize this. And therefore the words 'Your life is hidden with Christ in God' are amazing! You are seen by God the Father as Jesus is seen by God the Father. When God sees you he sees that you forgave your enemies, you persevered through temptation, you loved others, you felt compassion for the weak and helpless, you healed others. You are God's child just like Jesus. This is a ridiculous good deal that no Black Friday offer will come close to. AND IT IS FREE!!

Paul also remarks that 'You have died.' You're dead! You, the way you use to believe, the things you use the think could get you all you wanted, the law you lived by gonzo! You're a Christ follower now and you are hidden in Christ! The Gospel reminds us that we are Children of God, not merely acquaintances, not simply simply friends, not even just relatives, but God's children. And he is a good, the best, the supreme Father to us.

So go eat your turkey or ham and pies. Go and remember that the toughest difficulties you go through, no matter how hard you fall and how many times you sin in the worst kind of way, if you entrust yourself to Jesus you will never cease to be his brother and the Father's child whom he loves infinitely.

monday is for morons: 11-14-2011

Have you ever been trapped? Stuck somewhere, in something and you did not know if you were ever going to be able to escape? Maybe if you have ever gotten an MRI and you slide in that small space you freak out for a moment. I had a reoccurring dream where I was swimming in a long pool and there was a sea creature always coming to get me and I could never get away! (thankfully I always woke up before I died)

Sinning can make you feel like this. 'I did this sin again: I will never win!' Or maybe you just came to the realization that you sin a lot and you cannot handle it: 'how could God love me?' Or maybe you look around at the world and see how distraught and dysfunctional it is and lose all hope and want it all to be over. Either way, we can feel trapped by sin. We can feel like its avalanche has fallen on us and we are counting down our breathes underneath a city of snow.

The ironic thing is that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are trapped by God's love! You cannot escape IT. You are coffined in by it. You are drowned by it. Psalm 23 concludes with: goodness and mercy me are CHASING me. You're the Pac-man and God's grace is the little ghosts that will never stop--and they get you all the time. God's love is that avalanche, not sin.

You see, because of what Jesus has done in dying for you you are not guilty of your sin anymore! 'But you don't know me! I have dark sins that are huge that God cannot ever forgive if he had eternity to do so!' Maybe I don't know you and maybe you have some serious issues but God can and will forgive you if you'd just go to him. God not only created you but the entire world and universe, every galaxy. HE WILL FORGIVE YOU IF YOU GO TO HIM. Jesus became like us so that we could be with God again. He became human so we could be holy. He died so we could have eternal life. He loved so we could love. He suffered so we could be comforted in our suffering. He rose from death so we too could rise from death. He was counted and called 'CURSED!' so that he could BE US in death and ruin the effects of sin for us!

There is no sin too big, too hideous, too appalling, too odd and repeated that God cannot or will not forgive. How can this be? It is only because of Jesus' work for us. You're not going to be perfect . . . ever in this life. I sin a lot! Much more than I care to. Everyone sins a lot everyday. So let's go to our God and get some forgiveness today, for now our running is from God's mercy, not his wrath.

Monday is for Morons: 10-31-2011

Jesus was just beaten to a bloody and disgusting mess. He was being called names and maligned. After the long nails went through his hands and he was stapled down to the cross. They, without concern of smoothness or being ginger, flopped the cross upright in the hole in the ground. The joking and final flop of the cross into the hole further ripped skin and stretched tendons. There Jesus hung. A picture of poverty portrayed, paradoxically to save.

Then the guy next to him and an 'ahah!' moment. Maybe he saw Jesus earlier in his life; as he was walking around the city heard of Jesus' claims, saw a miracle or two. Or maybe he had never met him before but,picking up on the jeers, discerned who Jesus was. Regardless, here he is suffocating along side the Son of God. 'Jesus,' he whispers out between breaths 'remember me in paradise.' Can you believe it?! I mean this guy was feeling sorry for himself, for at his 'death bed' he realized what an idiot he had been his whole life. I mean people steal because they don't work, right? Sure, live your whole life like you want then at the end whine like a baby and seek repentance, what a moron!

But wait. The disfigured face of Jesus clearly claws out a sentence, 'Today, you will be with me in paradise.' WHAT!?!

The truth of it all is that Jesus' mercy and grace and love and compassion and patience are far greater, far more shocking and scandalous than we could ever have imagined. It does not take a life-time of good deeds and bible reading to enter to bliss of Christ's presence forever. It takes the realization that all your friends already know, you're a rotten to the core sinner. But Heaven is stock full of rotten apples like you! What's one more? There is no sin too large that God, like Gallagher, won't obliterate to bits! Smashing it to that it covers the earth as they life at the sin's triviality.

You have a sack full for God to smash? That's okay, he has both the time and the power for it. 'But these are some really big ones!' you reply. He has it covered, he'll just bring out a bigger hammer. Hurry, find your forgiveness in Jesus' work, go now, before you feel so guilty again that you think he could never forgive you.

Monday is for Morons: 10-24-2011

Sometimes Mondays can feel like an unhappy awakening from an otherwise fanciful life that you were living. I'm willing to say that the guy who invented sliced bread did so on the weekend, woke up on Monday and was still bummed. And sometimes it seems it would be more pleasant to listen to an entire album of nails on the chalkboard then to roll out of bed. This is life . . . but not all of it, thank God.

There is a verse in the Bible's Old Testament, the book of Psalms, which was often the only reason my work chair stayed occupied: 'Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy!' Think of that in an agrarian culture; if you did not sow the seed for your crops at the appropriate time, come harvest season you'd be looking at the ground going 'crap,' because nothing has come for you and your family to eat or sell. So a point here, the one which was helpful to me, is that your labor today is somehow helpful to you or will be. It is maybe part of a stepping stone in your career or maybe your life; maybe it is as simple as being productive and useful; for most it is a means to place food on the table, heat in the house and toilet paper on the roll.

Today may be the worst day in the world, but keep hope. For the Christian there is hope. Work is not JUST work. And sadness will not remain forever. Remember the Gospel of Jesus. He did not come to make you a perfect being with no flaws while on earth. He came to save you because you, because all of us, are a bunch of idiots who very frequently forget that God is god and we are not god. 'I have sinned!' you say. I have too. all of us have. Now let us together remember that Jesus, if we believe in him, what he did, if we entrust ourselves to him (lots of words here but it is not hard) we are forgiven forever. And that is a long time.

Monday is for Morons

What makes you a Christian--if you claim to be one? Is it all the good or admirable things you have done . . . or thought about doing? Mmmmm, no. Maybe it is your sincerity in whatever you do end up doing. That's kind of dumb--sorry. Ugh, maybe you are a Christian because you were baptized, or you say your prayers; OH! You are a Christian because your parents are, and they still go to church sometimes. You DO have that tattoo that could be interpreted as spiritual, and Christianity is spiritual.

Okay. That is weak. Let's see . . .


Maybe you are pretty good. You read your bible a lot. You pray not only for yourself but for other people. You even (watch out now) GIVE MONEY TO THE CHURCH!

When I became a Christian and started trusting Jesus I knew next to nothing. I knew what the bible was and could misquote you some funny sounding bible verses--'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow will be like today or far better!'--I liked that one. I did not know big confusing sounding words like theology, soteriology, ecclesiology, blah blah blah. While these big words are helpful, they did not save me.

Somewhere along the line of life after my salvation I began understanding some more things in the bible. I read some thick books. I started learning those big words. As this happened a terrible and stupid OTHER thing happened as well: I started believing that other people were not REAL Christians until they knew the things I knew. Can you believe it!? I just tried to disqualify my own salvation. What a goof I was. Thankfully God softly back-handed me in the face and allowed me to see how silly I was thinking about things.

You need not be some scholar sporting a sweater vest and a mean beard. You do not even need to know one verse in the bible by memory! You do not need to have all your stuff together. You do not need to clean up your act. You do not need to do anything really.

Jesus says he came to save people who knew well that they needed saving. They knew they were SOL without someone helping them. Don't put your hope of salvation in your actions or thoughts or a scale--I did not do too much bad stuff. Put your hope in Jesus again. He is probably the only one who truly and completely and with empathy knows all you're going through and still loves you fully.

Monday is for Morons

I have forgotten the Gospel again. I have forgotten that I do not have to sin anymore. I have forgotten that Jesus was forgotten so that I could be remembered by the Father.

Maybe you found yourself this weekend in places where sin seemed to be all you knew. Friend, Jesus died for you.

Did your football team blow it so you blew up at everyone? Were you the one who had the opportunity to forgive someone else but instead you chose to make them feel as bad as they made you feel? Did you say something that you feel unraveled everything you tried to teach your own, little, impressionable kids? Did you lose hope this week? Were you the one who knew you were going to sin, had time to not sin, yet continued on ignoring the EXIT sign? Maybe you said to yourself, 'I just do not care enough.' Maybe you said, 'I don't think God exists anymore.' . . .

Maybe you cheated on your spouse. Maybe you cheated on your taxes. Maybe you killed someone in your heart; maybe you killed someone and are going to be in prison the rest of your life. You looked at porn again. You got that abortion this week. You told your best friend she could 'go to Hell' then sounded happy and laughed the very next minute on the phone.

Friend, Jesus knows. Jesus knows and that is precisely why he died. Jesus did not die for the 'polite' social sins; Jesus did not die for certain kinds of sin; Jesus died to experience God's wrath on your behalf for each and every individual sin you will ever commit from lying to lynching. You cannot outrun God's grace, it is a tsunami, a treaty of kindness, a promise that will not be annulled or void, it is your shadow.

Mondays typically suck. I typically forget how present and persistent the Gospel is. I typically emphasize sorrow and not Jesus' success. Well Jesus died for our doubts too.

He tells us all our sins our forgiven . . . yup, even that one he has fully placed on his tab and paid for already.

Monday is for Morons

God told Jonah, 'Hey, go here.' Jonah said, 'Okay God.' and then immediately went the complete opposite direction.

Later on Jonah was swallowed whole by a sea creature. He was fermenting in the belly of some beast. Though I like any proof, I'm convinced Jonah was swallowed on a Monday. It smelled, it was dark, it was like a roller coaster that would not end--he probably threw up--, maybe his skin was being destroyed by acid . . . it was unpleasant, like Monday's can be.

We can learn from Jonah. He cried out to God, the God who made the beast swallow him, the God of Mondays. I read a quote last week: 'There is nothing we can do to make God love us more' so stop pounding coffee and 5-hour energy drinks babbling to yourself, 'I'm a winner; I'm a winner.' You're sins are forgiven by Jesus.

The quote goes on to say, 'There is nothing we can do to make God love us less.' If you are a follower of Jesus this is true. Sin as you might, God's love still lingers like a groupie to her band.

We know that even after Jonah was spewed on the beach he still whined and complained and assuredly sinned. You may feel like Hell today, that is okay; God's love and grace and promise of the hope of Heaven, hope of perfection in his presence still exists for you.

Monday is for Morons 09.12.2011

Well it is that day again, the day which all bad things seem to have been building up only to all explode on again: Monday.

As it is Monday and we are forgetful and often silly creatures, here is a reminder of God's grace and power in addition to the hope he gives us to keep on keepin on:
'Christ Jesus came to save sinners of whom I am the foremost.' (1 Timothy 1.16).

This is the Apostle Paul talking here and he is not producing some false humility either--saying he is bad but really thinking he is not--no, he realizes he is woefully sinful and in need of some serious and drastic help from God! The Apostle Paul has no boot strap sufficient to pull himself up by; his friends who probably have way more obvious sins than he are not enough to make him good enough, his past accomplishments are simply not enough to mend a ripped relationship with the God of the universe . . but Christ was enough for Paul and Christ is enough for you and me!

Friend, are you doubting? Are you in depression? Do you feel that you are sinful before God? Do you sense guilt and hopelessness within you? Are you afraid? Do you know you are inadequate? Then you are in a good place, now good to Jesus Christ who died for each and every one of your sins; go to him and find your forgiveness. Nothing you could do will forever separate you from God's love, save that you do not go him through Jesus'.

We can be forgiven our sin and also have our guilt taken away because Jesus Christ died on your behalf. Believe it. Believe him. Follow him.

Monday is for Morons: 08-28-2011

It’s Monday. Today is the day that reminds us how long a week is and how quickly the weekend goes. Monday is a status—How are you today? It’s Monday—as if we all know what is going on this day, we are all familiar with the feelings that the Monday sun shines on. Monday is the day of whining and pouting. Monday is the day of sighs and complaints. Monday, somehow, is the day I forget what Jesus has done… therefore Monday is for morons like me.

I hope to use this sometimes dreadful day as a quick reminder of God; a simple word to give hope and a fresh, crisp breath in our forgetful souls; something just enough to get us by until the sometimes-good-sometimes-bad Tuesday.

So before you kick your dog, be rude to your spouse, or pour coffee on your co-worker here is God:

Romans 8.31: ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ The quick answer is everyone; everyone can be against us, the whole world! But God IS for us. You are in God’s corner. God is fighting on your behalf. God has established victory for YOU! Yes, he already knows your wicked and stupid and miserable and gross sins, but he has forgiven them, all of them. He fights for you; he has won for you; he has succeeded for you! Let’s not let the Monday drag us down but let us instead be glad in Jesus’ work for us. It is finished and nothing will change that. Don’t think that you can outsin the grace God has freely given; kick such thoughts to the curb and keep on keeping on. Take your emptiness to God and be reminded anew of the smile under which you, Christian, always and forever will sit under. The only smile that matters: God’s.