how often can you fail?

Failure is a word I hate. Not that I infrequently encounter it, rather that it and I are too acquainted. For many, failure is associated with 'losing,' with 'not measuring up,' with 'not good enough,' with 'others are better,' with 'messed up,' and so on. And with some, it quickly unravels to the thought of 'no one, not even God or my closest family likes me.'

Failure is a field where lies can grow. Failure is also a pause in time where, if it is not met with goodness, can harm for years to come. I've felt many many times. Whatever arena it is found--sports, morality, relationships, writing--it can crush a soul.

But we don't have to live in the presence of our past; we don't have to wake up and live in the memory of yesteryear. It is not some magical mind trick; it is Jesus. 

All the times toy have not failed will never satisfy you. You can do 1,000 things perfectly right and the one thing you failed in will ruin it all. And if you did 1,000,000,000,000 things right you'd feel even WORSE about the one failure! You can't escape the imperfection of who you are. But we can go to Jesus in our imperfection and know that we are forgiven, we are loved, our existence is worth maintaining.

We are all going to fail in a multitude of magnitude and type. But if we are walking with Jesus our failures don't win; he wins. Death won't sting, it'll open a big door entering Jesus' brothers and sisters into an eternity without the torment of those mistakes we all have made.

God is good in his grace he grandiosely provides. If we are his, our failure loses, not us.

forgetting your memory

We sometimes like to use Paul's words in Philippians, where he says, 'forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,' as a reason to never ever be thankful or delighted to be the Christian God has made us. We reason that if Paul is ditching everything in his past to go hard after more and more of God then, by golly, so should we!

The over-the-top people always offend everyone else because they tell everyone how terrible of a Christian they are by not being like them; but then there are others who are all about some self-abasing-but-I-actually-pride-myself-a-lot inner thoughts kinda folks--it's easier to harbor my feelings of arrogance than manifest them. But both run with Paul's words of forgetting what's behind.

Is this past-neglecting really a commendable mental exercise?

No.

In the Old Testament God often told people to make memorials. This usually happened after God did something to save the people or fulfill a promise. The purpose of these, usually, mountains of rocks was for the purpose of remembering what God had done, how God blessed his people. When a family was traveling or exploring and they came across, say the monument built after the Jordan River crossing, it was to be used as a reference for a story; a story of how God, the YHWH they still worshiped, freed them and brought them, after 40 years of chasing their tail, to a Promised Land.

I personally, like some red-faced and sweating boss, want results immediately--YESTERDAY!--and it better be new and exciting. I have a hard time soaking in what God has done already. And Paul isn't saying Be unsatisfied with your worship; be unsatisfied with God; be unsatisfied in your walk with Jesus! Paul goes on to say Let us hold on to what we have already attained.

So let's remember what God has done. Let God's acts of time past give faith for today.

Jesus needed help

The Gospel according to Luke has some different perspectives than the other Gospels, especially with regard to Jesus' last days. So in Luke 22.43 we read that an angel from Heaven appeared to Jesus in his distress and strengthened Jesus.

Don't miss that: an angel from Heaven strengthened Jesus! 

I think it would be far too easy, though helpful, to summarize and say, 'If Jesus needed help, so do we.' But there is something bigger and better going on! God the Father knew that his son needed strengthening and the Father provided that strength for his son.

I don't know what the Greek word translated into 'strengthen' means, except strengthen; meaning, there was a lack or a need of provision form without. The Man needed God. God needed God. And God provided what was needed.

I'll be the first to admit that I also don't understand all the intricacies of Jesus' manhood and divinity at play here, it's all as clear as mud to me. That isn't the point though. This doesn't mean that God will give you everything you think you need. We can't take one story and mean it will happen for everyone.

But, as the children's song goes, 'when we are weak he is strong' because God loves us, his sons and daughters.

I'm not listening!

A silly strand of reason exists in some minds: if someone is wrong about one thing, they are more than likely not accurate in most. To believe such a farce is foolishness at its brightest.

You know what I'm talking about, right? Say you are listening to your new favorite broadcast. You have been learning interesting little facts about whatever and boom, the speaker says something you completely and from your core disagree with. Suddenly you've not only personally boycotted the now formerly new favorite person, but your tweets and Facebook status bemoans the individual (and if you are from the American South, you may add a 'but bless his heart' at the end.)

But I don't do that at all, you say. Oh yes you do, we do it all the time. A reason why we often think we don't fall into such a thing is because we do it to book writers. I will briefly give some reasons why you should read authors you know you don't agree with:

1. They may say just something helpful. Sure, you think they are snide, arrogant and better off living in Antarctica but who knows where something helpful might come from.

2. They may be more than their phrases. I know that often I can hear one thing come from someone's mouth (or pen) and assume ten thousand things about that person. How dumb is that? That's like meeting someone for the first time; they sneeze in the first five minutes and you assume their body is devolving and they are gonna die soon. Yea, doesn't make a lick of sense, so let's not do it with people's words.

3. We are arrogant and prejudice and opinionated ourselves. We assume that we are not only correct in our opinion--which we may or may not be--but that the other person is a little lower on the respect chain than the apes in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

4. We could be wrong... (gasp)....Ahem, I said we could be wrong! I know, I know; it is a terrible thing to think that our thoughts are not divinely inspired, beating a golden path of righteousness as we go, but...

5. We need to learn to familiarize and respect contrary opinions. Many resist the counter (I'm not talking about running away from table-tops), they plug their ears when they smell something different. We need to learn how to walk into uncomfortable arenas of thought; shut up; listen; learn and not dismiss everything as asinine or sophomoric or from the Devil. Respect does not mean aqueous, get trampled on or accept everything. It means understand the idea and not resort to sophisticated belligerence and name calling.

There is an old saying: Learn to eat the meat and throw away the bone. When you eat a chicken wing you eat the meat, not the bone. This saying is applied to listening. If you willingly listen to someone who might think upside down from you and not immediately discount them, you will learn!

I thought this was a biblical blog? It is. Because of what Jesus did in dying for sins and coming back to life, sticking it to sin and death, we don't have to be right all the time. That doesn't mean we should ignorantly live and be okay in our stupidity; rather, we can know that ultimately God's truth will always, in the very end, be revealed and win out. We can be humble enough to listen to other people and not tune them out because those who have been saved completely by someone elses doing are already humbled (we just forget it most days).

Any thoughts or additions? Please comment.        

puppy joy

I have a puppy. She is almost 5 months old. There were often times when I would go to let her out of her crate and notice that she had peed everywhere and, apparently not caring too much, laid in her own mess. But when I came to the crate door she would go crazy! Her mouth was open; her body was grooving; her tail whipping around. She didn't seem to remember how gross she was. In her joy of seeing me--and probably anyone else who would let her out--she disregarded her mess and stinky odor.

We should be more like her. We are constantly screwing up and making significant messes. But God continues to come; God continues to love. I am not at all saying we should be cool with our sin; but because of repentance and what Jesus has accomplished on our behalf we should not refuse joy. 

For some reason, I have a meter in my mind: if I sin I have to wait a certain time limit before being okay with God, before I can crack a smile. This is a lie, though. There is not a word in the bible about mortifying yourself for God, for repentance. John Owen, a long-time dead guy, said that we have to be killing sin or sin will be killing us. This is true. But we are not to be like the priest in The Scarlet Letter who would wound himself after committing sin. No, Jesus died for our sin; we need to add nothing. I don't want to sin and I don't want you to sin but, as the end of the book of Jude reminds us, it is God who will keep us from stumbling and who will present us without blemish and in joy before the Father. 

We should be quick to remember our Savior's strength, not our sinful succumbing. Because of Jesus' life, death and resurrection, sin is no longer a gateway to wrath; Jesus has tread on sin and unplugged its power. 

So we have the opportunity for joy, even in our messes, for God has done what we could not; he took a three-day trip where we would have been obligated to live; he undid all that we made and gave all that we could never earn. So we could wag our tails in his presence.

How can God work this out?

How many times have you said or thought some form of this: I just don't see how God can do anything with this situation or I don't see how God can work this out!

For me, it is easy to quickly conclude God a bad planner when my life stinks. I'll have a problem and see no solution in front of me so I naturally think God has abandoned me and humanity altogether. Maybe you are not so untrusting, but I can be. God, I don't see your solution; and if what I am living is your solution, it stinks. Often entrusting yourself to God feels like riding on a new roller coaster blind folded: you have no idea what to expect and where you'll be thrown and sometimes you wonder if this new, untested coaster is going to break your neck or come off the tracks.

Well, in this uneasy water of God's control we read Isaiah 55.8, 9. It explains that God's thoughts are altogether different and better than all of humanity's collective wisdom!

This is amazing! It is not as though we are speaking Japanese and God only speaks French. No, the difference is more like comparing an ants ability to reason with Albert Einstein: God is just better; his thoughts are more and other compared to ours. Our thoughts are glimpses into his whole understanding; sparks compared to his universe of wisdom.

You may say, who cares? If you are a Christian, you should care. If you are not a Christian, you should care. If God is fashioning a plan superior to ours than we can (again) entrust ourselves to his care. Through the disobedient child, the tooth ache, the car that broke again, the lost pet, the broken relationship, the joblessness, the whatever your hard and frustrating life circumstance, through all of these things God is weaving a brilliant story that will ultimately end in making God look good and his followers being loved and cared for.

Remember how the in the Bible we are told that each human's life is so short it is like a breath or a vapor? All of time is a story, your chapter may look like total chaos but the end is coming. Heaven and the new earth are waiting to burst on the scene; God is ready to release the goodness and grandeur of his glory, for they are being held back like a race horse chomping at the bit ready to go do its thing.

Where we cannot see or conceive God gave us faith to believe.

you're a cannibal too

When I heard about some guy in Miami caught on camera literally eating another living person, I wanted to throw up. I thought to myself, ‘Welp, here we go; we are at that level now in the states’ (knowing fully that crazy, stomach turning occasions have been going on for as long as sand has existed). My vomitous reaction was quickly overcome by a sense of brutal, hot anger when I heard that people were cheering this flesh eating druggie because they thought it was cool that there was someone who acted like a zombie. (Please, if you are one of the foolish morons, don’t tell me.) I mean what is WRONG with you!? Do you realize that is a soul-filled human being who was created in the image of God—both of them? And the cannibal—induced by some weird drug—was shot to death like a rabid dog. After my blood vessels receded back to invisibility I trembled at a startling reality: nothing prevents me from being the homeless victim, the frightened policemen, the cheering video watcher, or the human eating deceased, except God’s mercy and grace.


I have amazing parents and family; wonderful friends constantly surround me; our cities—for the most part—are ruled with some order and some sense of justice—especially compared to some countries I’ve lived in. But to understand sin is to understand the evil which can become anyone. Sin is as toxic as Chernobyl.

Most of you won’t try and believe that you could eat someone’s face, that’s okay; it is a super disturbing thought. But know that you are not exempt from the terrors of becoming, of doing horrific acts against God and man. The ONLY thing which prevents you is the mercy and grace of our sovereign God restraining you. Nothing else. Not your little self-help, motivating books or sayings; not your smile; not your good nature (cause you truly don’t have one); not your logic; not your morals; not your focus; not your family; not your friends; not your church; not your devotions; not your prayers; not your teaching; not your learning; not your activities; not your good marriage; not your charity; not your yoga; not your ‘soft-heart;’ not your ‘sweet spirit;’ not your good kids; not discipline; not your discipleship; not your go-get-it attitude. Without God you have no hope at all. So stop pretending you do apart from him. Stop pretending ‘Oh I could NEVER do this or that’ because you could. The only thing restraining you is God’s grace and mercy.

I remember a part of Jesus’ life where he met a crazy guy who had demons inside of him. The man was living in a cave, exiled from his home-town. He was naked with broken chains still clinching his body; he had scars and festering wounds where he would cut himself—relieving his pain by destroying himself. Jesus healed him. Just like that. No one is outside the reach of God’s salvation, beyond the reach of true hope, of love. Not a cannibal, not you. In the disturbing and smile-dropping reality of life there is a hope greater than the gloom. Death and destruction do not have the final say, God does and he his kind and loving; wise and good; sovereign and just.