Thirst

My mind has been in a race all morning. I went to bed with a heavy heart because of some issues other people were dealing with and woke up this morning with my mind running a million miles an hour. When circumstances in our lives seem crazy, disruptive, out of control and frustrating, it is very difficult to rise above them and put on the “happy face” that everything is fine.

Eternally I know that Jesus has everything under control and that my life is secure in him. But the circumstances that I find myself battling are not always easy, nor do they feel very spiritual. In fact, it simply seems like I am running in place, making no progress and bogged down by a heavy heart and a mind jumbled by details.

It is in these moments that I must hit a spiritual reset button. It is in this time that I need to step back and look eternally at the truth of my life and not the temporary obstacles. In the end, God has my best in store for me and my life is in his hands.

I am reminded of David’s words as he bared his soul to God:
“O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Psalm 63:1.

My soul longs for God’s presence, his peace and his comfort. I seek his heart and his perspective. I long for a reminder of his grace and mercy in my life.

The most interesting this about all of this is that the circumstances are not directly related to my own. I hurt for someone I don’t even know personally because of pain in his family’s life. I hurt for families in our church that are hurting. I long for more connection with the one true God in order to feed my own soul.

The way to rid your soul of barrenness in the desert land is to find water. In John 4, Jesus promised that those who trust in him will never thirst again. Jesus, please quench my thirst with the power of your love, your grace, and your presence.

Emily

Sixteen years ago today my life changed forever. Before that day Alana and I had been married for about three years and had learned to live and love together. Then, on June 4, 1993 our world was forever changed when Emily was born. From the moment I held her until today I have been amazed that I get to have the joy of being her dad.

Emily is an awesome girl. Some people miss it and don’t really see it, but she is a young woman of strength, character and deep passion. The greatest thing I see in her is a desire to love and serve Jesus. Her music and her desire to serve working with kids is one avenue of her love for Christ. I pray constantly that God would continue to grow that deep into her soul.

When Emily was three, I was having the worst day of my life. I was sitting in the back room of our house staring at the mountains of Southern California and contemplating what was happening to me. Emily came in from watching Barney and got in my lap. She took her hands and looked me dead in the eye and said, “Daddy, Jesus loves you.” Suddenly it seemed like maybe things would be alright after all.

Emily is also an athlete. She is all about basketball. From the time she was three years old it was the only sport she ever truly loved. She got a basketball goal for Christmas when she was five and has never stopped shooting. She wears a t-shirt that says, “Remember when you play ball like a girl used to be an insult?” She is strong, talented, and focused. Whatever she seeks to do in life, I know she will succeed.

Emily is not perfect. None of us are. But Emily is a young lady who is daily finding herself and daily causing me to strive to be a better dad. She is smart, funny, talented and beautiful. She is able to think deep thoughts and yet silly enough to make up goofy songs with her brother and sister.

As a dad I am very proud of all of my kids. Today Emily reaches a milestone birthday. She will get her drivers license soon, she will learn to depend on me less and less and she will soon be off on her own to live the life God has designed for her.

In so many ways today I am honored, proud, and excited for Emily. But there is another part of me that wants to shrink her down, cause her to still want to cuddle with her daddy on the couch and be my little girl again. I want her to be the same little girl shooting hoops on a four foot goal and watching Barney. (Okay, we can skip the Barney part, but you get the idea.) Today is Emily’s day. And as a dad there is no way I could be more proud of who she is.

I have learned a lot in sixteen years. I have learned that for good or bad your children will reflect you. When Emily is all competitive and hates to lose, that’s me. I have learned that as much as you want your kids to grow, it is the parents who experience the growing pains. And I have learned that God is a great and an awesome God to bless me with three amazing kids. It has been an awesome sixteen years!!!

Resolution

Many people know the basic bible stories of Daniel. We know of Daniel being taken from Israel to Babylon and how he was trained to be a servant to the king. We know about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (their Babylonian names) and the stand they took even while facing the fiery furnace. We all know the dramatic story of Daniel in the lion’s den. What we often overlook is the first choice Daniel made that allowed him to rise to such an important place in the government of a pagan king.

I heard Andy Stanley talk about this passage several years ago at Catalyst, but as I was reading the passage again this morning the depth of Daniel’s actions seemed to jump off the page. Daniel 1:8 says, “But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine.”

Daniel was an upright Jewish young man who did all he could to follow God’s design and law. When he was taken into exile he could have easily given up and followed the commands of the pagan king and eaten food forbidden by God and participated in the pagan lifestyle in front of him. He had the perfect excuse to disobey God. His life literally was on the line.

But Daniel “resolved” not to defile himself. He made a heart commitment to stay true to God’s plan, God’s design and God’s purpose for his life. The scripture indicates that Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were the only ones who made this decision. All of the other young men taken into exile compromised their faith in order to fit into the lifestyle of Babylon.

How often do we make the same decisions? How often do we make a slight compromise here or a “course adjustment” there and find ourselves blending in to the landscape of our culture? It is so easy. We have the perfect excuse. We want to blend in, adapt, and participate in order to influence.

But Daniel made another choice. Daniel 1:17 says that because of their choice “God gave knowledge, and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning.” God made them outstanding because they chose to take a stand.

I worry sometimes that in our struggle to influence we give up our core values of holiness and separation. I am not a legalist. I am not talking about whether certain actions are right or wrong. I am simply asking a question. In our effort to reach the culture are we losing the resolution of our souls not to be defiled or defined by the culture?

Storm Trooper Kimmie

The picture attached to this post is of Kimberly, my 8-year-old Storm Trooper. That was taken a couple of weeks ago at Hollywood Studios at Disney. This morning I really understood how much of a “Storm Trooper” Kimberly really is. She was riding in the middle seat of the Suburban today as I took her to school. We are driving along chatting about the fact that she only has a week left in school before summer break. Then Kimmie decided that Daddy needed a good laugh.

Being very serious she said, “I like sitting in the middle seat because I can see how fast you are going. The speed limit is 45. Remember, safety never takes a vacation.” Needless to say safety almost took a vacation as I tried to keep coffee from flying out of my nose from laughing. I am never quite sure what my kids are going to say, but I am usually sure it is going to be funny.

When I got to the office this morning and was thinking about it, I was reminded of the fact that people are always watching. It may be our kids, our friends, our co-workers, neighbors or total strangers. But someone is always watching how we act, how we speak, and how we represent Christ. That can be a huge burden, but thankfully Christ never called us to be perfect. He knew we would never be perfect, so he gave us his Spirit to help us regulate our actions and think about what we are doing.

We may not always have our own personal “Storm Trooper” in the backseat to remind us of what we need to be doing, but we can be assured that God’s Spirit will never leave those who follow him and seek after him. If we listen, if we tap into his plans and purposes for us, we can rest easy in the fact that people are always watching. Even 8-year-old little girls.

Disconnect

I have three telephones, two web sites, a blog, three e-mail addresses, a FaceBook and Twitter (yes, I Tweet!!) and yet there are times when I still feel disconnected. How does that work? How can I have so many connection opportunities and still feel a sense of disconnect?

I have been thinking about disconnection in leadership and life over the last couple of days and have drawn a few conclusions. They may not be earth shattering, they may not be entirely new, but they are real in the ways in which they show up in y life.

I feel disconnected when I am focused on the deadline and not the goal.
When I am focused on the fact that certain things must be done in a certain time frame and not the fact that they serve a purpose it causes me to disconnect from the larger vision. It becomes the tyranny of the urgent rather than the pursuit of a vision. This happens frequently in ministry life because as soon as one Sunday passes you begin preparing for the next. Perry Noble described preaching as “giving birth on Sunday and waking up on Monday pregnant.” But when we focus on the task of preaching and not the end goal of communicating the greatest message ever it causes disconnect in our life.

I feel disconnected when I see people as interruptions instead of opportunities.
This is a weird tension in ministry because some people need you to pay attention to them always and we can never meet everyone’s needs. However when my calendar does not allow me time to actually minister to individual needs instead I am missing the point of the Great Commandment. You remember that one: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Ministry is about people and we cannot reduce them to programs that fit neatly into our calendar.

I feel disconnected when I allow ministry to try and feed my heart.
When I fail to spend time with God to feed my own soul I am cheating myself out of the refreshment that God’s Word has for me. We can’t always be preparing the next series or talks. We have to focus on the heart of God connecting with our heart first before we can imagine it connecting to others. Time is life’s great equalizer. Everyone gets 24 hours a day. If some of that time is not spent feeding my own soul, disconnect leads to drift which leads to desire which leads to sin. We have to be connecting to God in order for him to connect into our lives.

So, I can have all the communication tools I need, but if I fail to use them properly I will be disconnected from others. We have been given all we need to connect with God. But if we fail to implement them into our daily lives, we will miss the message of love, grace, freedom and hope that God has for us.

How connected are you?

Speaking to the Next Generation

This past week I had a very cool opportunity to speak at a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting at the University of Florida. Yes, it was very hard as a Tennessee fan to go to Gator Country, but if any place needs Jesus it’s Gainesville!! I kid: every place needs Jesus.

It was a great time to watch some students that I have known since they were in elementary school lead the summer program. They organized everything that happened and we had about 120 people at the event. It was exciting, energizing, and then sobering.

Crusade events are very fun. College students have a lot of life, energy and they love to laugh. I was having a great time until the moment I realized that I was almost twice as old as anyone else in the room. When did this happen? I have known for a while that I am no spring chicken anymore, but really!!!

As I spoke, I made mention of the fact that I was twenty years removed from there they are. I remembered how God worked through situations in my life in college to help me see things in a new perspective. I also remember that the lessons were not always learned easily and were very rarely learned the first time.

When I finished speaking, several students came and talked about stuff going on in their lives. One young lady shared about how she was trying to minister to some friends. One talked about how churches in his home town were dying and he felt God calling him to go make a difference. He also asked about seminaries where he could be trained for ministry.

What I realized through this time was that every conversation I had started with a question. Students were looking for answers and hoping that maybe I could help. This is the exciting part of having some life experience. You get to share what God has shown you to a new generation of leaders that God will use to carry on his mission throughout the world.

It is not so bad being the old guy when God allows you to have a platform to share and teach his love to those coming behind us. I love having opportunities to speak to young crowds. They are passionate, challenging, and motivating. I only wish I had possessed their passion when I was their age.

Preference or Kingdom

It is so easy to see that sometimes the church is not focused on the true Kingdom of God. That may not seem quite right at first glimpse, but look deeper into the words of the apostle Paul in Romans 14 and see if you can wrap your brain around this concept.

“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Romans 14:17

How many times do we as a church place eating and drinking at the center of the issue? Okay, we never talk about eating because we don’t view gluttony as a sin. And some denominations still wrestle with whether or not to drink alcohol, which even members of the same church can’t agree on. But in my view, Paul is talking about something much deeper. Yes to the first century Christians he was writing to eating and drinking were the issues, but what has replaced those in the church today?

In 21st century American Christianity the issues may not be food and wine, but types of music. Maybe it is political party affiliation. Maybe it is how to spend money in the church. Maybe it is style of leadership. These issues have become the issues that divide the church and keep us from having the life of power in the Spirit of God that he has designed for us.

If we look at the passage, what we really see is that Paul is calling us to put aside our own personal preferences or desires and to focus on the major aspects of community that the church should be about. We are to lay aside our preferences for the good of others. We are to set aside our agenda for the agenda of God.

What Paul calls us to follow is a life of living rightly in God’s eyes; seek peace through giving preference to others over ourselves and to seeking out joy over complaining. The result of this type of life is a unified community seeking the honor and glory of God and not the agenda and prideful desires of man. If we were really honest we would say that our lives are not always seeking these areas because they require sacrifice. They require self-discipline. They require not getting our way.

What would the church look like today if we truly sought righteousness, peace and joy?