“That Guy” Entry Nine: Anything But Jesus

A string of hackneyed titles crossed my mind before I chose this one…”In Christ Alone”, “Nothing But the Blood”, “I Surrender All”.  But recently I was faced with the truth that I am 99.9% reliant on anything BUT Jesus.  The sad thing is there aren’t many who would find fault in some of the things I’ve used to help manage stress, anger and disappointment. 

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For recurring sins in my life, I’ve found accountability partners to encourage me.  That’s biblical. 

I’ve been working at a daycare for a year now, and I’ve found that in all honesty women in general are better equipped for this.  Fourteen voices barely talking but shouting for attention, seven of them whining because of some made up offense or just because, repeating every direction in a soft voice while a kid who you could strangle with one hand shouts “NO!” and sends a snot shower into your face.  I’ve daydreamed of killing about 80% of the kids I work with, and leaving the other 20% alone deep in the woods so nature can decide their fate.  I’ve tried every approach from just repeating “WWJD”, to counting to ten, to underhandedly insulting them.  Then I found that playing drums releases the stress and anger, so now I play drums almost every day for half an hour or so.  Respectable method right?

I’ve been married for a few months now, and of course there are all kinds of disputes and misunderstandings there.  So I do what I read in all the marriage books: remind myself of why I love her, dwell on the positive things she has done for me, never ask her to change something if I’m not willing to change something myself, fake it till I make it (with affection, not love of course) , learn to compromise.  We’ve done our best to talk through every problem and have only gone to bed upset once.  Not bad right?

My dad once told me (brace yourselves) that “the size of a man is what it takes to make him angry”.  Instantly cured my road rage.  Makes it easier to keep my cool when a kid stares me in the eye while he pours his milk on the floor.  “I’m a bigger man than this, no toddler is gonna push me over the edge”. 

And we have probably all heard at some point that we can’t judge someone based on the windows of interaction we have because we may not know what they are going through behind the scenes.  I friend of mine who works in food service recently told me a story of a woman he nearly blew up on because she took way too long to decide what she wanted, even after waiting in line for five to ten minutes.  He kept his cool, only to discover that she had, two minutes before walking into the restaurant, discovered that her husband was cheating on her.  True story.  With that and like stories in mind, as well as our own moments of weakness as reminders, it becomes much easier to cut someone else some slack.  

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Quite simply though, none of these things are Jesus.  And everything else WILL fail.  There are masterful methods of avoiding this fact.  Delay tactics at best.  And I fancy myself among modern legends of self-motivators and inspire-ers.  But I can feel it all coming full circle…all the issues I put aside and drowned out, all the stresses and challenges I avoided for fear of failure, all the personal weaknesses I re-worded to be faults in others.  It’ll be kicking and screaming, but God will take me, I am eerily certain of that.  And everything else will fade away.   

“That Guy” Entry Eight: Unclean

The young adults small group at my church has recently begun to read through a great book called “He Still Moves Stones” by Max Lucado. It’s a great read for those with little time and such, because what it does is something I haven’t found to this extent in any other book I can remember reading up to this point. It takes a story, be it five verses or fifteen, from scripture and really delves into it. We recently reached chapter seven, titled “A Crazy Hunch and High Hope” based on the story of the bleeding woman from Mark 5:24-34. The discussion that followed from my group brought up some genuinely astounding points, the biggest of which was that those verses provide a microcosmic look into the life of every Christian.

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Mr. Lucado points out that the woman’s condition affected EVERY aspect of her life. Sexually, maternally, domestically, spiritually…she was unclean. Everything she did was tainted, everything she touched was unclean, everyone she had contact with had to be ceremonially cleansed. Twelve years of bleeding. And ironically it didn’t say “She had tried a few doctors but none had successfully healed her. No, it says “She had SUFFERED very much from MANY doctors.” Every remedy she had tried until this point had made things notably worse. Hope had long since been abandoned and let’s be real, no one wanted much to do with her.
What hit me for the first time (maybe not new to you) was that this was a chronic menstrual disorder. Scratch that, that much I remembered. But I had never made the correlation between that and Isaiah 64:6 which says “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…” Later, the verse talks about our sin, but it begins with the heart of the matter: even what we consider good, or better, or adequate is worthless and disgusting to God. Nothing. Less than nothing. EVERYTHING we do. Just like this woman. She wasn’t allowed in the temple because her body was unclean. If she made dinner, or made the bed, or cleaned the house, everything she touched was unclean and no one else could touch it. Even her husband had to choose between God and her. He couldn’t have sex with her according to the law of Moses, and even if he broke the law and did, he wouldn’t have been allowed to enter the temple. Her every act, regardless of intention or motivation, was tainted by her condition.
That’s what makes her encounter with Jesus so extraordinary. She risked everything, literally, even her life. If anyone in the crowd surrounding Jesus had recognized her, she would’ve been killed. I had never grasped the full scope of her situation. The emotional havoc that twelve years of ostracism and hopelessness must have caused. The crippling desperation that led her to what was essentially suicide; the unclean outcast approaching, despite every obstacle and challenge, the perfect person of Christ.

He would’ve been justified in condemning her. The crowd surrounding him would’ve sung his praises for upholding Mosaic law. It would’ve scored him points with the Pharisees and Sadducees, maybe even shifted their perspective of him and eased the constant conflict for a while. Instead, he turned to her and, as Mr. Lucado pointed out, gave her a unique name among every woman in the bible. He called her “daughter”, a most intimate and personal relationship, and the only time recorded that he ever called a woman that. “Sinner, you are healed” would’ve been sufficient. “Go in peace your faith has healed you”. He did so much more.

And now the entire course of her life shifts, but at the same time doesn’t. The bible doesn’t say what she did. Rumor has it she followed Jesus and was with him in his final days. I personally like the image of her returning to her life as it was, but with every act now being pure and Christ honoring. I like the picture of her finding the deepest joy in simply washing dishes and clothes and cleaning the house. I like the idea of her embracing her husband for the first time in years, crying, simply overwhelmed by just a touch, but a loving touch worlds apart from the harsh, distant touch of the doctors. I imagine she awoke every morning with the memory of how her life was, and then praised God openly for the new life and opportunities He gave her.

Imagine the reverence and intimacy of her first trip back into the temple. How even the rituals of purity were performed with fervor and devotion. How every word from the priest’s mouth was consumed by her hungry mind and grew in her humble spirit.

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Ideally, this would be the experience of every Christian. Every believer who finds that his entire life of worthless, pathetic attempts at self-righteousness is now given purpose. How he can know that while nothing he can do will earn him a thing, he can at the least live a life before man that gives glory to the only one worthy of it, and know the only sustaining source of identity.

It goes without saying how pathetic it is that I can’t name five people I‘ve known, myself included, who have even lived one day with such joy and conviction.

“That Guy” Entry Seven: Normal versus Majority

I heard someone say once that when the world got flipped upside down in the fall, the things that were the most good were what became the most evil.  It’s weird to think about.  Makes sense though…also makes sense that once you get used to the darkness, the light becomes the thing most painful to face.  It’s sorta like Gatorade…when you have a time out during an intense basketball game, the last thing you want is a Pepsi.  But when you haven’t worked out in months, just finished half a pizza and need something to wash down the cinnamon sticks, that Gatorade just won’t cut it.

It’s literally like reprogramming yourself.  A full system reboot to get back to where God first had it all set.  Of course the only problem with all of this is that pretty much everyone and everything else around you is in constant struggle against what you are trying to do.  Why is it so difficult to not drink in a bar?  Yeah, yeah, that’s what you’re supposed to do there, why go if you aren’t going to…whatever.  Let’s get passed the “whys” and say that you’re just going out with friends, but recently decided not to drink.  Or you can’t afford it.  It’s almost mind-blowing how quickly someone, even a stranger, will spend their money to buy you a drink, but never have spare change for the guy in the santa hat a bell outside Walmart every year.  Or take premarital sex.  I have heard one too many stories from guys who told the girl they were with that they were saving themselves for marriage, or vice versa, and rather than respecting that, the other person took it as a challenge to try even harder to break them.  Why?

It’s like swimming upstream…yeah, played out analogy, but effective.  It’s like trying to get back to the source of the river, while everyone around you is swimming away from it.  It’d be great if you could just hop out of the river and walk upstream, but it’s not that simple.  And it’d be nice if the same freedoms of expression the world grants to everyone else were extended to Christians, but they aren’t.  Instead, actively opposed.  Sucks.

And of course it’s not that the only thing working against us is the outside…the forces inside are even worse.  So we have to accept being a natural hypocrite, simply because we CAN’T be perfect.  But we try…and while the world is apt to forgive anyone else who truly apologizes, we Christians are held to a higher standard.  Which we should be.  And we should hold ourselves to it.  But with the understanding that failure is unavoidable.

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Being on fire for God is normal.  Giving praise and honor back to the being to whom you owe EVERYTHING is pretty logical.  If a baby straight out of the womb despised, mocked and ignored its mom until the day it died, we would question its mental stability.  There is a part of all of us that is somewhat disgusted to see a child, teenager, or adult completely disrespect and disregard their parents.  Yet, we do the same and worse to God.  In high school, if someone talked bad about your momma, those were fighting words.  But when God is mocked, we (myself included) are much more apt to join in.  Maybe not by contributing a punch line or two, but sitting there quietly laughing isn’t much better.

TRUE Christians should be the norm, but instead are the smallest minority.  The majority of people harbor an attitude toward God that doesn’t make any sense at all.  Myself included.  Why is it so hard to maintain the healthy attitude toward God that I feel so deeply convicted for not having consistently?

“That Guy” Entry Six: The Trap

If you haven’t read Radical by David Platt, I wouldn’t advise you to.  It’s a little like being diagnosed with a deadly disease…you have to either completely give up or fight.  And this book, over the past few months that I’ve been reading it, has been more convicting and eye-opening than most anything I’ve read, save the red letters.  So unless you’re prepared to actively evaluate your entire life and consciously choose to either change or reject its truths, don’t read this book.

It’s in a lot of ways a constant reminder of Romans 12:1to me.  “Do not be conformed anymore to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Once you open your mind to the question of “how have I been conformed?”, there’s no limit to how deep the rabbit hole goes.  Then sifting through that to see which things are social norms versus acceptable or suppressed sins…it hurts.

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The one thing that has been constantly killing me is the idea of time management.  I once wrote on my wall (literally on my bedroom wall in Sharpie) “is anything you’re doing making your life better?”  That was a couple years back, and since then I’ve lost the ability to sit and watch TV.  Especially reruns.  I get antsy, need to multi-task, or do something…anything else.  The main reason for it at that time was that I was sick of always saying I didn’t have time for stuff and then realizing that I always found 30 minutes to drop on TV.  It’s amazing how much more productive you can be with just that little bit of time back.

So, I opened up time, got more productive, accomplished more than I ever thought I could in a 24 hour day…then I started to read Radical.  And that opened the door to the question “is what I’m doing the BEST thing”?  To honestly evaluate every minute of my life through this filter is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do.  The excuses I’ve come up with are a bit humorous, but mostly pathetic.

I won’t go into details, but think about this even: is writing this blog right now the best thing I could be doing?  Couldn’t I be out helping the homeless?  Couldn’t I be reading my bible?  Couldn’t I be finding new ways to establish deeper connections with the people God has put in my life?  Heck, even you…is reading this blog the best thing you could be doing (assuming for a second that you’re a Christian) for God’s kingdom?

Jesus didn’t have a day planner that kept him busy from 6am to 12am.  But he also wasn’t a huge Friends fanatic.  Or whatever they had back then…morality plays and pig wrestling, who knows.  My point being, there is a happy medium…Jesus didn’t kill himself trying to do EVERYTHING possible to help EVERYONE around him, but he also didn’t waste his precious time on trivial things with no value for the kingdom.

Just some food for thought.

PS  If reading this blog alone was enough to frustrate you, I’d seriously warn you to never read Radical.  I literally can’t go back to the person I was.  Curse you Mr. Platt.

“That Guy” Entry Five: Irony

When all you expect is a few McNuggets, even a Big Mac looks fantastic.  As an ex-employee of the Golden Arches, I can assure you, Big Macs hold the same appeal to me as fried chicken does to a cow.  Not the best metaphor, but I hope you get my point…it’s just not good.  But honestly, when I made the choice to abandon what it seemed I had spent my whole life preparing for in order to actively follow Christ, I wasn’t expecting joy, honestly…just a steady contentment.  The strength to be content in all situations, regardless of how comparatively crappy mine might be to those around me.  A funny thing happened though…

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I wrote earlier that God’s primary purpose isn’t to make us miserable.  We just misunderstand His methods and label them cruel.  I had gone from a band that had gathered somewhat of a following and bit of a buzz around my city to…nothing.  Nada.  Starting from scratch.  More than a decade dedicated to a single band, which I broke apart in a few months.  Of the five, three of us stayed around, but with few prospects.  Then God brought in a new guy…a guy who loves the Lord and brought a whole slew of new songs, ideas and energy.  Here we are a few months after the break up ready to start recording again.

And the crazy thing is, we are getting offered shows.  And not just coffee houses.  But chances to play praise and worship for hundreds of people.  Chances to get paid potentially more in a single show than we ever got with my former band.  Do I think that we are suddenly gonna hit the big time and rule the airwaves?  No.  But the fact that I can now sit around and just play praise songs with a band and be completely content with it is beyond me.

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I was expecting McNuggets, and I’m getting steak.  And I’m happy.  Not just joyful, but happy.  Whether this band ever goes anywhere or not, I’m ok with it now, because I got the chance to use God’s gift properly and experience what it’s like to be living in His will.  Makes me wonder just how many other things in this world He made to give us extreme joy that we squander because we don’t understand.

I mean, with marriage on the horizon, I can’t help but wonder how screwed up my view of sex is after all the movies and tv shows I’ve watched.  God made it to be good, how badly have we cheapened it?  Food, music, nature, science, technology, community…all these things we don’t fully understand that we just use to selfish and often detrimental ends.

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Someday I may understand this all, but one thing that the last few months has taught me is this:  living in God’s will is living as we were meant to; and we were meant to live in joy and peace forever.  All else is nothing.

“That Guy” Entry Four: Overdose

If a friend came to you with a new spice, new recipe, new favorite drink and offered you a taste, you would most likely accept.  If a friend came to you, told you (in complete sincerity) that everything you like about food is a lie, you’ve been a fool for all of your life and tried to force-feed you the contents of an entire shopping cart, you would not.  You would argue, reject it, be pretty pissed and maybe even lay him out.  There’s a reason all the little carts in Sam’s Club only offer you bite-size samples:  so that you can choose of your own will, not only to ask for more, but also to be willing to sacrifice your money for it.

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Matthew 5:13 says that we are the salt of the world.  I don’t think salt was chosen randomly for this  analogy.  Think about it: if you tell someone their food needs salt, they’re gonna be offended because it’s a matter of personal preference. And even if they trusted you to put salt on their food, they would be pissed if you dumped an entire salt shaker onto their plate.  But that’s what a lot of Christians do once they’ve had their mountaintop experience and truly grasped how awesome living for God can be.

Most people I know aren’t a huge fan of street preachers, forcing their message onto everyone within earshot.  I was one of those people until I realized that I was becoming a preacher myself; but to those close to me.  To the people who would’ve trusted me to sprinkle of bit of salt over their meal, I had decided to dump every last grain of salt available onto their plate.  To believer and unbeliever alike, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

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The “light” analogy of Matthew 5:14-15 fills in the gaps of the verse before it.  Imagine living in the dark, being completely accustomed to it all of your life, and then having someone suddenly turn on stadium lights just inches from your eyes.  I wouldn’t call that person a friend.  I would call them all sorts of things, but not a friend. Now imagine instead someone lighting a candle and placing it across the room.  It may take a few minutes, a day or two, or even years, but once that person comes to the light, it will keep them there.  Once they choose of their own free will to move to the light and experience it for themselves, it will hold them there.

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Emery, in their song “Listening to Freddie Mercury” sang “it’s not our job to make anyone believe”.  Our job is to be a light, pray God will move in people‘s hearts, and rejoice with them when He does.  That’s it.

Project 151: First Installment

First 7 0f 150

Psalms 36 – Your love oh Lord reaches to the heavens audio chords
Psalms 42 – As the deer pants for the water audio chords
Psalms 51 – Create in me a clean heart oh God audio chords
Psalms 62 -  My soul finds rest in God alone audio chords
Psalms 84  – Better is one day in your courts audio chords
Psalms 119 – Thy word is a lamp unto my feet audio chords
Psalms 136 – His love endures forever audio chords

This is gonna take a while

http://www.worshiparchive.com/song/your-love-oh-lord

“That Guy” Entry Three: Worship

A lot of things changed when Adam ate the apple, but nothing new was created. Which makes me assume a few things…

1)  Our purpose in life was and is to glorify God

2)  We live in a constant state of worship

3) God enjoys making us happy

Now I can already see the indoctrinated minds honing in on the word “happy” and saying God never promised to make us happy, He promised us joy.  Yeah…but that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy.  If you look at a lot of the things in this life that give us pleasure, they aren’t things that magically appeared after the Fall…they are things that got corrupted.

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I’ve often wondered what the world would look like if Adam had never sinned, and what things we would still have today.  Off the top, I’m pretty sure we would still have the X Games, beer, paintball, sky diving, and stand up comedy.  I could be entirely wrong, but my point lies in this…none of those things are inherently evil.  Only when these things, as with anything else earthly, are misused and/or worshiped do they become an issue.  If God didn’t want us to be happy, why would He make so many different kinds of fruit?  We could’ve had just apples.  We could’ve all been born in exactly the same manner, learned the same language, grown to the same height, and had the same hair, complexion, accent, sense of humor and taste.

I think God made us all so different for a bigger reason than just to show His creativity and power.  I think He did it so that our finite minds would NEVER be able to run out of reasons and reminders to worship Him.  Even in the most repetitive and menial life, there are countless variations and nuances that point to God’s glory if we are astute and aware enough to simply look past our own nose.

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Which leads me full circle to the idea of us CONSTANTLY worshiping SOMETHING.  Granted the majority of the time it is ourselves; I know I have my thoughts occupied by plenty of other things…the majority of them just as meaningless.  The day I got the mental image of God walking Adam to the top of a waterfall and saying “I dare you to jump”, my entire perspective on life changed.

God created a world full of thrill for the adrenaline junkies, science and physics for the nerds, sunsets for the poets, irony for the pranksters, and volatile enough to never be entirely predictable.  The next time you see a video of a sneezing panda or a drunk squirrel, know that God made the world in such a specific way that that was possible.  Then ask yourself WHY God would do that, besides to make you happy.

 

Feels a bit conceited right?

“That Guy” Entry Two: Project 151

A lot can happen in seven days.  I, personally, went from an aimless, nervous, anxious neophyte in following God’s will, to just nervous and anxious. It’s incredible how all it took was me stepping out of my comfort zone and actually sacrificing something for God for Him to start revealing Himself to me.

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Long story short, God is not a whore.  If you’ll pardon a very limiting and inadequate analogy, He is like a beautiful woman being pursued.  While a selfish act may get you what you think you want right now, an unselfish act will not only be more beneficial in the long run, but also slowly convince her to open up to you.  And from my own personal experience, there is not much on God’s green earth more captivating than a woman who knows she is loved and is comfortable with revealing her true self and soul to you.  So when theincredible God who created that woman starts revealing Himself to you, it’s hard not to be moved.

Now it’s really hard to convince myself that I can begin to describe, for those of you who haven’t felt this, how amazing it is.  It’s a lot like falling in love; everybody laughs and just can’t understand it until they’re the ones with their pants around their ankles hanging from a Ferris Wheel.  God has revealed Himself to me in such an individual way that even if I told you the details of how He did it, you would think either I’m crazy or I’m folle.  So now, just like a man in love, I wanna give back, express these feelings of how smitten I am.

This is where Project 151 fits in, and how I was led to it.

• Prayer is our way to give glory to God;
• Psalms is a book full of prayers;
• We are called to memorize scripture;
• I memorize a song much easier than a monologue.

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So with no specific deadline, bench marks along the way, or even a general projected course of action, I mark today as the beginning of my effort to have all 150 Psalms posted in this blog in song form, in order to facilitate my own memory of them and any other poor soul who stumbles onto this page.

 

*  I know there are 150 Psalms, not 151, but that’s my promise to God that Psalms 150 will not be the end of the work He started in me.

*  I know there are plenty of Psalms already in song form…just means I have less time to completion.  And anyone else out there with a guitar, piano, bagpipes, whatever, I would love to collaborate.  Where two or more are gathered, He is there.

“That Guy” Entry One: Though None Go With Me

For those of you who stumbled upon this little blog while searching for Rihanna pics or Haley Williams nude, I’m gonna go ahead and save you the trouble of scanning further.  You’ll have to look elsewhere.  For the three or four of you who were just looking for something interesting to read, I can only promise I’ll at least keep you awake.

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This blog is no longer an album review, or a top 5 list kinda deal.  Long story short, I recently became “that guy”…the guy who leaves a solid band because he knows God is leading him elsewhere.  Throw in the fact that it was shortly after getting into a relationship and I’m a walking clique.  I used to laugh at guys like me…promised I would never be one…wished harm on the things they loved.  Now, on this side of it, I’m realizing just how liberating, alienating and extremely difficult it is to follow what you KNOW is the right thing.

 

Ah Further Room…my old band…the band I put about 7 years, $6000, and a college degree into. Look us up on Itunes; we’re awesome. I doubt you can imagine how much it sucks to look your best friend in the face and say “I can’t do this anymore”.  What sucks the most, though, is that I tried.  I compromised what I knew was right…I ignored plenty of signs that things were going down…I fell into the same stuff they were.  Heck, some of the bad cover songs we played were my ideas.  But things finally hit a point where standing on the fence was no longer an option…a point of no return.

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So this blog is now me, a decent guitarist, amateur songwriter, struggling Christian and scatter-brained schizophrenic, chronicling what God has planned for those who decide to abandon the easy road and are determined to give Him everything, no matter how much it hurts, or how many people hate you for it.