Man of Fate

When I was about 20, which was only a couple of years ago, I was lifting weights at the YMCA when I saw a man in his 40s doing curls. Because of the mirror, I could see both the front and the back of this stranger. I could see that his arms were huge. He was curling what I was bench pressing. He had blond hair and blue eyes. He was my height and my body type. He looked like me plus 20 years of age and 50 pounds of muscle. I wondered, Is that me, from the future? I studied him to determine if this was the case. He never even glanced at me. That’s how I finally determined that it wasn’t me. If it was me--from the future--I wouldn’t be able to stop from stealing a glance at the me from the past, whom I had probably gone back 20 years just to see (why else would I go to the past and work out at my old gym?) at the risk of destroying the space-time continuum. I think I was reading a lot of Philip K. Dick at the time.

Time, for anyone who pauses to think about it, is fascinating. Fate, time travel, changing history, time zones, daylight savings--the list could go on. My favorite thing about time, though, is that God invented it. And, the coolest thing about God’s understanding of time, is that He knows everything that will ever happen. In fact, before He created the heavens and the earth, He knew everything about me. He knew when and where I would be born and when and where I will die. He knew that I would see somebody at the gym and wonder if it was me from the future. Do you think He smiles about that or rolls His eyes?

The Bible tells us that the steps of the righteous are ordered by God. If you put that together with His omniscient understanding of time, you’ve got a rock solid plan. And if you went a little off-track, off-plan, for a spell, you don’t have to sweat it: God knew that you would do that. He built in an allowance for that. He doesn’t just know the number of hairs on your head, He knew the numbers of hairs on your head for every second of your life before He created Adam. God’s plan is so good, we can’t mess it up.

P.S. If I disappear in my 40s, check the Pat Jones YMCA’s records from 1999. 

The Steps of a Writeous Man

I have always wanted to be a writer. When we went around the room confessing our dreams for the future in my high school Sunday School class, I said, “I want to write a hilarious novel.” I was working on a hilarious novel at the time. I never finished it, although I did get over a hundred pages into it. And it was hilarious. It didn’t make any sense, but it was hilarious.

I once had an interview to be a copy writer for a company that sells vacation packages. Before the interview, I got pretty excited about this opportunity. I already had a wife and three kids, a degree in English, most of a Master's degree in writing and a job. But no one was paying me to write, and I wanted to be a writer.

I think the man interviewing candidates was the manager of the branch. He was definitely in charge of all the people in the building. It was a small company. He could have been the founder of it. He was in his late 30s and wore a suit like a small dog wears a sweater--unnaturally. He had a double chin hanging over his collar. His tie was crooked and it was tied crookedly. His pants were too baggy in the legs and too tight in the buttocks. He called out “Eric Broswell” in the antechamber (lobby) and brought me into his office without even looking at me. His office had magazines lying on the desk, on a chair, on a coffee table, and on a sofa in the back of the office. At least nine dead and stuffed animals were placed haphazardly around the room--on top of tables, magazines, chairs and the sofa. His office wore work like he wore a suit. He gave me a rubber fish handshake and told me to sit down on the only un-cluttered chair. He plopped down in the chair behind his desk, stuck a pen in his mouth, leaned back and crossed his legs. He still hadn’t looked at me; he didn’t look me in the eye once during the entire interview. Instead, he continuously flipped through my resume and asked me questions that could have been answered by looking at my resume. Questions like, “Where did you go to college? Oh. (Sour face) Evangel.” And, “Did you even graduate from college?” He asked me--with his pen in his mouth--why I would leave the good company I was working for (and still work for) to work for his company. I told him that I would do so because I wanted to be a writer. He acted as if this were the wrong answer. He wrapped up the interview and told me they would get back to me after the writers he already had on staff had a chance to look at my writing sample.

I knew immediately that he was not going to call me. And, if he ever had called me, I knew that I had to turn that job down. I was disappointed. I had thought that this was going to be my chance to become a real writer. Instead, I had wasted an afternoon. An afternoon-and-a-half if you count the hair cut the day before. Throughout that interview, I could hear God telling me that this was not the place for me.

Now it is several years later, and I still don’t have a full-time writing job, but I know that I am working where I am working because God’s plan is better than mine. God’s path is not a shortcut, but it isn’t a long-cut, either.

Don’t Bury Your Talent

We recently had a talent show at our church. I did not attend. I was at work. My wife and children went, and were so impressed that they showed me the highlights on YouTube. This particular talent show was the final week after a series of talent shows in competition for a $10,000 scholarship to the college of the winner’s choice. I was impressed by what I saw. And a little heartbroken. Why? Because these kids can sing, write music, play instruments, etc., and I’m afraid that they are going to go to college and become accountants or something.

Don’t go to college and ditch your dreams for a more practical profession. Sure, someone has to be a doctor. And there are those who dream of being a doctor. They don’t dream of having prestige, an M.D. stuck to the end of their names and a large paycheck. They actually love the idea of being a doctor. They would want to be a doctor even if “doctor” had no more prestige or money attached to it than “mechanic.” There are people who love working on cars, and dream of becoming mechanics. If that’s your dream, do it. On the other hand, lots of kids dream to be actors, directors, writers, singers and musicians. These are the kind of dreams that are abandoned as impractical. More people struggle every day to become an actor, a musician or a writer than there are slots available. So someone is going to be disappointed. But these jobs are more important than most people realize.

What impacts culture the most and the fastest? Music, movies and television. If more Christians were part of the mainstream media, the culture would be pushed toward a more Christ-centered culture. Too many of us have an Amish view of life: “Let the heathens enjoy their music and we will enjoy our music without any electricity (I threw that part about electricity in just to make the metaphor work). We need to start loving Jesus in public, and I’m not sure how public having our own subculture is. I wonder how many people were introduced to Jesus through POD versus how many were introduced to Him through dcTalk. And I’m not talking about altar calls at their concerts. That’s just a step in the evangelistic process. I’m talking about planting the seed in as many minds/hearts as possible. I’m talking about affecting an entire culture. The actors, writers, directors, singers and musicians are the people who affect our culture.

Christian kids need to fill these positions. Let the non-Christians be the disappointed ones. If you have an unrealistic dream and you don’t have any dependents, you can chase that unrealistic dream. Start early. Work hard. The best at any job are never the lazy ones. And the less likely you are to break into that profession, the harder you have to work at it. Take what talent and desires God has given you, and don’t let anything push those away from you. There will be a point at which you will have to settle for a job to support your family, but that is not as soon as most people think it is. It is not right out of high school, or even right out of college. Spend some time trying to do the remarkable thing before you settle into the regular world, filled with cubicles and stain-resistant rugs.

My wife asked me why I was crying when I was watching the video with the winner of that talent show and when I told her, she scoffed at me delicately. She is probably correct to scoff. Just because the winner of the talent show is going to college doesn't mean she is not going to use her talent. She could still become a worship leader or a professional recording artist. And it could even be God’s plan for her to become an accountant. And if she loves accounting as much as she loves to sing, it probably is. I just hope that she never buries her talents in the dirt to settle for something practical.

Brave

I have been brave. I'm brave all the time. For example, I interview musicians for ONCOURSE Magazine. I have been doing this for two years now, and I am terrified every time. I can't sleep the night before I do an interview. I can't eat the day I do the interview. All I can manage to do within two hours of an interview is pace like a caged animal. But I always do the interview.

Doing an interview over the phone is a pretty low-risk scenario. I'm sure there are those of you who cannot believe that anyone could be afraid of talking to a stranger on the telephone. I was thinking today about something that a couple of kids in the Bible did that would have terrified even the boldest of us.

The virgin Mary had a baby boy, and she and Joseph named him Jesus.

We tend to think of Mary in supernatural terms, but she wasn't supernatural. She wasn't an angel, and she wasn't perfect. She was probably 14, and she probably prayed a lot, but otherwise she was just a plain old kid. Think of the terrible things girls in your high school go through when one of them gets pregnant. Mary potentially had it even worse. She could have been stoned to death.

Joseph was still a teenager himself, and when he found out Mary was pregnant, he decided to dump her. He knew it wasn't his kid. He hadn't touched her, and he didn't want anybody thinking he had. But the angel came and told him to marry her. So, Joseph obeyed. What did people--Mary and Joseph's parents and friends and neighbors--think? That Mary was still a virgin and had become pregnant with God's child through a miracle? That Joseph was not the father? Not likely. No matter what they told no matter how many people, everyone was going to believe that Joseph got a little too close to Mary a little too soon. Now they could both be stoned to death.

The trip to Bethlehem on a donkey doesn't sound too bad. But remember how old these young adults are? If they were to make the pilgrimage to Bethlehem today, they still would be riding on donkeys; they would've been too young to get driver's licenses. And they would be more likely to meet a highway robber on the road than a highway patrolman. 

They got to Bethlehem and had to deliver the child in a manger. The Bible doesn't mention any doctors or midwives. Joseph was the one telling Mary to push. A teenage boy delivering a baby in a cave is the kind of heroic news on "Good Morning America" these days.

And then, after a couple of years in Bethlehem, the wise men came. That night, Joseph, still a teenager, was told by an angel to flee from Bethlehem to Egypt. Now the teens were immigrants. It's starting to sound like a show on the WB. 

Mary and Joseph were brave. They were teenagers being used by God to change the whole world. Even the history of the whole world. They were changing not only the future, but the past. Everything the Old Testament said about the Passover lamb or the son of David was going to be understood in a whole new way. They didn't exactly understand the rewards, and they knew they were risking death, but they continued to trust God every step of the way. They were brave, godly teenagers. And they raised God's son.

Becoming an Expert

I used to write a lot of poetry. I wrote so much poetry, I even started to read poetry. As far as I can tell, that’s the main audience for a poet: other poets. I started writing poetry in high school. I probably wrote a lot of “Roses are Red,” poems even in junior high. Poems like:

Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
Your shirt has polka dots
So does your face.

I was really into the twist at the end: the surprising insult combined with the surprising non-rhyme really tickled my funny bone.

My junior and senior years of high school I really amped it up. I wish I had an example of one of those poems to share, to make my point a little more dramatic, but I think I threw them out in a fit of embarrassment a few years ago. Those high school poems were really, really terrible. I didn’t realize how bad I was at writing poetry at the time. I knew they weren’t the greatest poems, but I hadn’t yet realized they were actually the worst. So, in college, I kept writing poems. All the way through college, I wrote poems. Here’s a poem I wrote after staying up all night as a college freshman:

Ink on Nose

When I write on my nose, I wonder whether the ink grows over a pimple.
Pimple, dimple, hemple, stemple,
nose grows
ink knows
pimple flows to my toes.

Not good. Not only was I writing bad poetry, I was also still fighting acne. It was a cry for help.

By the time I graduated from college, though, I was a really good poet. I got the prime reader’s slot at poetry gatherings. I won a poetry contest. I even briefly considered becoming a professional poet (but, then again, there aren’t many professions I haven’t briefly but seriously considered).

Between the first batch of poems I wrote in high school and the last poem I wrote while I was still in college, I wrote hundreds of poems. I spent thousands of hours explaining to the poetry-reading public (other poets) how much I wanted a girlfriend. I got better at writing poetry because I wrote a lot of poetry. The same principal applies to every endeavor we have on this earth. And we know it. It’s not a surprise. If you want to be good at anything, you have to practice. There’s a popular book that I have heard quoted dozens of times, while I have not even bothered to learn the title, that says that it takes 10,000 hours of doing an activity to become an expert at it. Professional athletes, comedians and writers talk about this all the time, and I try to write for at least a couple of hours everyday because I want to be an expert at writing.

Until today, I never considered becoming an expert in prayer. I have wanted to pray. I have wanted to talk to God and to hear from God, but it never occurred to me that I might get better at those things, that I could become an expert in prayer. Prayer is not something you produce, like a poem, and it is not something you can perform, like a pass in a football game. It feels a little irreverent to say that we should practice at prayer, but, like writing, practicing the act is the same as performing it. The only way to get better at writing is to write, and the only way to get better at praying is to pray. There are no drills. But if God created us so that it takes practice and commitment and determination to become good at writing poetry and shooting baskets and even talking to girls, then it makes sense that it takes practice to become a prayer expert. It takes time. It might even take 10,000 hours. It will be the best-spent 10,000 hours of my life.

I Tried to Give Blood

I tried to give blood, once. I went to the donor center, and stepped right up and sat in the chair and they looked at my arm and said, “You’ve got good veins.” I knew I had good veins. I had pride in my veins back then. My daily habit at that time was to lift weights for about an hour-and-a-half a day, then use the elliptical for 30 minutes a day and then swim for 45 minutes a day. It was an insane work out, and if I had known how muscles work I would not have done it that way. My muscles weren’t getting much bigger because they never got to rest. But my veins were sticking out more because I was running out of body fat--and water.

I’ve been reading the book of Job this week. Job’s three “friends” were actually sinning while telling him how sinful he must be because they were quite proud of how sinless they were. Anyway, I was no Job: I was proud of my veins.

The nurse told me I had nice veins, stuck the needle in my arm and told me to let her know if I had any dizziness or light-headedness. I told her almost immediately that I had these issues. She told me to count down from 100 or say the alphabet backwards--I guess to keep my mind focused on something--and then I started hearing static. I told her I was hearing static, and then I passed out. When I came to she was putting a blanket over me. I had only been unconscious for a couple of seconds, but it was long enough for me to pee my pants.

That’s right. I peed my pants. Right there in front of everybody. She didn’t put the blanket over me because she thought I might be chilly; she put the blanket over me to hide the pee spot. They gave me a gigantic pair of scrub pants to wear, and I put them on and sat there eating cookies and drinking kool-aid for a couple of hours, trying to recuperate enough to drive home.

And I peed on myself for nothing. They threw the bit of blood they had taken from me in the trash. But I’m no Job. I didn’t return the pants for about eight years.

I wonder sometimes if I have anything to add to the world at large because I haven’t encountered much personal tragedy. (I am aware that the story of when I peed my adult pants is comic, not tragic.) Struggles create character, just like exercise builds muscles. We may need a rest time between struggles in order to allow our character to fully heal between bouts, but without hard times we become soft people. That, perhaps, is part of the reason that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is to put a camel through the eye of a needle. And, perhaps, it’s why so many Americans have trouble believing in anything; most people in the middle and upper classes have never really struggled. We’ve never had to believe in anything. We’ve got our beds and our food and our iPhones. We even have extra blood. Who needs God?

Rough times can sharpen a person into a useful tool for God. Why did bad stuff happen to Job? For the glory of God. No matter what happens, I am convinced that everything will ultimately bring glory to God. Even peeing my pants.

Fear

I am afraid of snakes. I have always been afraid of snakes. Just a few weeks ago, my wife and children witnessed a pair of garter snakes mating in our backyard. One of my children ran into my room and excitedly told me what they had discovered. I said, "Oh no," and then I put my feet up on the bed, away from the ground. I did not go outside. Last Sunday, they found a turtle in the backyard. I got up and looked at the turtle. Turtles are cute. Snakes are gross.

I am also afraid of God. Such fear, David the psalmist-king says, is the beginning of wisdom. What does he mean by that? I have heard many times that all is meant is “respect.” I think it is much more than that. Reading through the Bible, you will find that when people encountered God--whether they were holy men or not--they freaked out. Some examples: When Moses encountered God on the mountain, the entire crowd of Israelites thought they were going to die. They begged Moses to tell God not to do that again. When Daniel saw God, he fell on his face and couldn’t move until an angel touched him and told him to get up. When Ezekiel saw God, he fell on his face and couldn’t move until an angel touched him and told him to get up. When Isaiah saw God, he fell on his face and couldn’t move until an angel told him to get up. (Do you see a pattern?) When Jesus stood on the mountain and Moses and Elijah stood on it with him, Peter and James and John couldn’t believe their eyes, and then God the Father showed up, too, and the three disciples fainted, and didn’t regain consciousness until it was all over. John the Revelator, on the Isle of Patmos, saw God, and he fell on his face and couldn’t move until an angel came and touched him and told him to get up.

Falling on their faces was not an act of respect, or of reverence, it was their reaction to something terrifying. My favorite story like this is about Jesus Himself. The guards and priests’ servants and the rest of the mob that accompanied Judas to arrest Jesus did not have any respect for Him. They did not revere Him. 

Check out John 18:2-6: 

Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons. 
Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, "Who is it you want?"
"Jesus of Nazareth," they replied.
"I am he," Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) When Jesus said, "I am he," they drew back and fell to the ground.”

“I am,” of course, is the name God gave Moses when Moses saw the burning bush. Jesus told them that He was God, and they were terrified. Did you ever wonder why the only person that got hurt when this mob came to arrest Jesus was the servant that Peter attacked? Even after Peter attacked him, nobody got stabbed or beaten down with a club. Jesus had already disarmed them. They were afraid.

Next time you have some time alone with the Lord, think about how awesome and holy our God is, that His very presence would knock you on the floor with your teeth chattering. That thought will give you a holy fear, and it will help in your worship of our awesome God.

The Old Testament God

A remark that I overheard recently, and one that drives me nuts, is that the nature of God changes through the Bible. More specifically, many amateur religious scholars have noted with pride that the God of the Old Testament is an angry God, while the God of the New Testament is a loving God. This remark is off base, and is usually made by people who have only read Cliff's notes on the Bible.

In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the oldest of the OT, God creates the whole world and wipes it out with a flood and then recreates it again. OK, I can see a little anger there. But he saves Noah-- who was the only righteous one left--and his family, and every species of animal. Then He chose Abraham and promised to bless the entire world through Abraham's ancestors. God used Jacob even though he was a liar, and Joseph even though he was a spoiled brat and nobody liked him.

In Revelation, the last book of the Bible (in the New Testament), God promises to destroy the whole world with fire and then recreate it again. I can see a little anger there. He promises to save those whose names are written in the Book of Life. And whose names are in the Book of Life? The good people? The charitable? The ones who have done enough good things to earn a reward? No, no, no. Most of those people will not find their names in that book. Instead, He picks people like Jacob, who were liars but believed in Jesus. He picks people like Joseph; people nobody likes for good reason but who will give themselves up to the will of God. He picks people like Abraham, whom He called righteous. Was it because of his goodness that Abraham was righteous? No. “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (James 2).

After Genesis, after the blood of an unblemished lamb was placed on the doorpost of every Hebrew home to keep Abaddon--the Destroyer--from killing the eldest sons, the Israelites are ordered by God to start wiping out the godless Canaanite nations. This sounds extremely angry. But this is only a picture of what the godless will go through in hell. And it will not just be the Sodomites (Genesis; Jude 7) who will burn for eternity. The good, moral people, who have done good works and are sure that they have earned their way into heaven will burn for eternity, too. Jesus tells us this over and over again in the parables. Everyone knows that the Pharisees were bad guys, right? But they were not bad because of their actions (at least not until they asked Rome to crucify Jesus for them), they were bad because they depended upon their actions to save them instead of depending on God. And now God has made known his love and his grace through Jesus. “So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests” (Matthew 22:10). No one can earn grace, but he freely gives it to those who call on Him. This is true of God in both Testaments, and the God of the New Testament promises heaven to those who don't deserve it, but he also promises hell to those who don't accept his gift of grace. The Old Testament is a tame picture of both how kind and how angry He is revealed to be in the New Testament.

Two Kinds of Sons

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is a parable that never really got to me when I was a kid. I thought it was pretty cool that the father (who represents God) would take that terrible kid back. I saw that it was a picture of God's grace, but I was never able to put myself in the prodigal's place. I could never imagine myself doing what he did. But Jesus didn't title the parable “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” And if He had bothered giving His stories titles, He probably would have been more likely to call this parable “My Two Sons.” (It wouldn't have been a cliché back then.) This story is not only a picture of God's grace but is also a warning for those of us who consider ourselves “good.”

In Luke 15:11, the parable starts out with a father and two sons. The famous son--the prodigal son --says to his father, “I wish you would die already so I could have all of your money now.” His father gives him the money without dying, and the bad son spends his fortune on sex, drugs, rock-n-roll and Pilates classes, gets so hungry he starts to covet the food in the dumpster behind the Waffle House and finally decides to go back home to beg his father to give him a job mowing the lawn.

The other son, the one who usually gets ignored, is the good son. In Luke 15:29, the good son claims to have been pretty much perfect, and his father doesn't argue. We don’t even know anything about this kid except that he obeys his father and wants justice and his own dead calf. At the end of that story, the father invites everyone into the party (Heaven) to celebrate the return of the bad son. Only one person did not go into the Heavenly metaphor: the good son. Why? Because the good son believed that he had earned the right to the fattened calf by following the rules. Instead of relying on his father’s grace, he was relying on justice. He never did anything wrong; therefore, he deserved his inheritance. He did not need grace from his father; his father owed him.

Many people make this mistake. We think that if we do everything right God has to be on our side. He owes us. But Jesus came and made it clear that it doesn’t work that way. Jesus died on the cross "while we were still sinners" (Romans 5:8). Because this is the case, we know that He doesn’t owe us, we owe Him. God doesn’t let us into Heaven because we obey the law or do good works; instead, we obey the law and do good works because He is letting us into Heaven. He already did it all.

Nothing we do after confessing with our mouths that Jesus is LORD and believing in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead can get us into or out of Heaven. He died for all of your sins once, knowing all the while that you would sin again and again. If you truly believe, you will have good works. That’s what Paul says in Galatians 5 and what James says in James 2. The result of true faith in Christ is service done to God out of thankfulness and love. If you don’t really believe, you’ll prove your disbelief either by going back to sin (the prodigal son before he came home) or by going back to doing good works to ensure your salvation (the good son). He did not die for those who loved Him first. He died for those who made it necessary for Him to die.

Everyone Worships Someone

I read a poem at a poetry slam once. The slam was held every other Thursday at a coffee shop that called itself the Magic Bean. Everyone else called it the Tragic Bean. Their coffee was awful. The magic was allegedly in their brownies, if you get my drift.

When it came time for the slam, everyone went outside, walked around to the back of the building, climbed up a flight of stairs, and stooped into a poorly lit attic where tiny desks--purloined from a university dumpster--were set up in front of a small stage. The rule of the slam was given by the event’s host: “The only rule is no props.”

When my turn came, I read my vivid and well-written poem about a butcher who killed and chopped up his own dog rather than punishing the pack. It was a metaphor. I hoped my poem was interesting enough to keep the judges’ attention; my presentation was boring.

One of the better slammers stomped around the stage in a circle with the rhythm of his poem. The audience was roaring with laughter while he huffed and puffed and stomped and tripped and tried not to burst out in laughter himself, all the while reading his poem, which I believe had several "Star Wars" references in it.

The last poet started his presentation by lighting a cigarette. Between lines of a poem about how great it is to smoke, he took long drags on his cigarette:

“It’s been a rough day.”

A long drag on the cigarette followed by a long, slow release of his indrawn breath.

“I need to relax.”

Another slow, deep puff on the cigarette.

“They say smokin’ ain’t good for you.”

Again with the cigarette.

“I don’t care.”

A final, longer drag on the cigarette and a longer, slower release of breath amid wild cheers from the crowd.

He was the only poet to break the only rule in the slam, and he won it.

I mentioned that my poem was a metaphor. It is probably obvious that it was a metaphor for Christ’s death on the cross. Writing that poem, and even reading it in that attic, were acts of worship. The other poets--and most of the audience at that slam--were worshiping, too. They cheered the smoking poem because it was about breaking the rules. It was about independence and self-idolization. That poem meant that they didn’t have to answer to anyone but themselves. As DA Carson would say, each of them had placed him or herself on God’s throne, which is the definition of idolatry.

Not every poem has to be about God in order for God to be happy with it, but every act--especially every creative act--worships something. Every poet, every musician, every painter, every athlete, is trying to please someone, whether that someone is a beautiful woman, a friend, a parent, or one’s self. If you act to please someone else, you have placed that person on God’s throne, and your creative acts are acts of worship toward someone that is not God. Everyone worships someone.

Worship

I was watching--against my will, because I am a manly man but also a servant to all--the movie "Soul Surfer" with my wife and three young children this weekend. It was my daughter's seventh birthday, so I had to join. It would have been much more enjoyable to me if the surfer girl had gotten her arm blown off by a grenade, or bitten off by a dinosaur, or if Kevin Sorbo, TV's Hercules, had dove into the water to get her arm back from the belly of the beast, but at least the shark added a few seconds of thrill. My son covered his eyes for most of the movie, by the way. He said he wasn't going to watch until she got another arm, and asked every couple of minutes if she had gotten another arm yet.

Meanwhile, my new 7-year-old was sobbing uncontrollably. You should have seen them when we watched "The Princess Bride" together. All three of them were screaming while Wesley and Buttercup were in the Forbidden Forest fighting the Rodents of Unusual Size. And then when Wesley was being tortured, all three of their little bodies were racked with sobs. It was hilarious.

At the beginning of "Soul Surfer," the main character (Bethany) runs up out of the water, throws a dress over her bikini, and sits down in church, where a crowd of blond women and Hawaiian men are sitting with giant smiles on their faces while they watch a similar group of people lead worship. Once or twice someone in the audience will mouth a word, but mostly, they're just basking in Carrie Underwoods' glow. While this was happening, my oldest daughter said to me, "Daddy, they aren't standing!" I responded, of course, that you don't have to stand up to worship God. But what do we have to do to worship Him?

As you read through the Psalms, you'll find that worship is commonly expressed through singing, dancing, lifting hands, kneeling, clapping and playing music. You'll notice that all of these forms of worship are physical forms. Our minds have to be focused on God, of course, but our bodies have to be focused on Him as well. The Hebrew word for worship (I learned this bit of Hebrew in Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline) literally means "to prostrate." The English word "bless" is from the word "to kneel." "Thanksgiving" comes from Hebrew for "an extension of the hand." Our bodies bow before Him as our minds humbly worship the Creator of the universe, who is so big and so powerful and so good that we cannot comprehend it. We raise our hands as we think about how He became a man and died on the cross that we might have life. We dance before Him as our minds understand that great salvation. No doubt there is a time to sit quietly in God's presence, praising God solely with the mind, but even if you are doing that while a worship service is going on around you, that isn't worship. It is spiritual. It is good. It is valuable. It is even necessary for a disciplined life, but it isn't worship.

My three little kids, while they were watching "Soul Surfer" and "The Princess Bride," experienced an emotion so great that it caused their minds to reel, their eyes to tear, their voices to howl, their hands to cover their faces, their bodies to cower. Mind and body, they were wholeheartedly reacting to these movies. As they get older, thankfully, they will gain control of themselves and allow themselves to react less and less. But when God comes, we will all worship. We will all bow down--some of us rejoicing, some of us wailing. We will all cover our eyes. All of our little bodies will be racked with sobs. It will be awesome.

iPod Fast

When I was a freshman in college, I didn’t know many people on campus. And my roommate and suitemates were not the kind of people who just let a fat introvert be himself. I was lonely and miserable. My devotional times became extremely important to me. And then Jesus--this is for real, not just a metaphor or a cliché--became my best friend. I started talking to God on my way to class. Out loud. And then He would sit with me at lunch, and I would talk to Him during lunchtime. Out loud. Sometimes people would look at me funny. I was a fat introvert, so I always thought people were looking at me funny.

It sounds like I was a weirdo, I know, but I have missed the times I had with God back then. I would pray between classes and during classes, and more than once ducked into an empty classroom and prayed and was filled with the Holy Spirit. And then after five or ten minutes, I would come out of the empty classroom, tears running down my face, and rush to my next class.

Jesus is more real than you realize. He is not my imaginary friend. He is not just an idea. He is not just a historical person. He is more alive than you or I am, and He can make your life powerful. He wants to be your best friend. Take some time from something you’re doing, and spend that time with Him.

This week I started a kind of fast: I am fasting from my iPod. Usually, any time I am alone I am listening to my iPod. This is mostly in the car, but I spend a couple hours a day in my car, so it’s a lot of time. This week I have turned off my iPod and am spending any time that I would usually spend with the buds in my ears praying. I imagine that He is in the passenger seat. Because I’m driving, this kind of prayer is not focused enough to be called my daily devotional prayer, but it does keep me focused on Him throughout the day. I have been enjoying it so much, I am definitely extending it for six weeks, and may never listen to another podcast again. If I were just pulling out the plugs to listen to myself think, I would not be enjoying it. As I have mentioned in this blog before, my inner dialogue is not much fun, and leans toward depressing thoughts. If I spent that time just talking to myself, it would not take me six hours to pop the ear buds back in. Spending all that time talking with God, though, is energizing, and I know that the more time I spend with Him, the more available I am to be used in powerful ways for His kingdom, and I am really looking forward to that. Someday, I might even start a podcast about it. And I hope you don't listen.

To Die is Gain

My aunt had cancer.

She had a hard five years that ended in death. Hard for her to endure, and hard for us to watch. Would we be happier if she had had a hard five years and then lived? Yes. We would be ecstatic. We would never stop praising God for that miracle.

Instead, she died.

But for her, as for Paul, to live is Christ and to die is gain. She had a hard five years and then was healed completely and forever. And we would have been happier if she had lived to die of old age. We would have shouted our praises to the Lord if only he would have deigned to allow her to suffer with us a little longer. We see through the glass darkly.

My aunt is in Heaven, where her entire life on earth was a blip in a place where time has no meaning. Five years of cancer? A twinkling of an eye. The 40 or 50 years we think she was shorted? A blink.

My aunt won a trip to Heaven. She did nothing to earn it. She didn't even have to enter a raffle. She got sick and got to go to Heaven 40 or 50 years earlier than anyone expected. And here in America, people work for years to make enough money to take a week-long trip to Hawaii.

When Jesus healed the paralytic, He told the crowd that the true miracle was that the man's sins were gone (Matthew 9). Healing the man's legs was only a sidebar, done to prove that He had the authority to forgive sins. We are more impressed with healing the physical body, but this only proves our short-sightedness. Once the sins of the paralytic were forgiven, the man held a promise of walking on good legs for all of eternity. Healing those same legs temporally and temporarily was only an illustration of something more real than legs. After all, even Jesus, who healed the lame man, said, “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell” (Matthew 18:8-9). Our physical bodies are merely shadows of a reality we cannot fathom.

Why did my aunt have to go through years of cancer? I don't know exactly, but to say that the reward is in Heaven is not a shallow answer. And what's even more exciting--for me--than my aunt residing in Heaven is that I will reside there one day, too. It's as certain as death.

I Made This for You

My grandmother has, in several drawers and trunks, all of the crafts and pictures her children made in their entire lives. My dad is in his fifties, but she still has the picture of a tree he made for her when he was 5.

Until I had children of my own, I didn’t understand why my grandma had saved all that trash, and, in fact, my wife and I usually only save our children’s work until they leave the room. As soon as we’re sure they’re gone, we bury it in the trash can. We have to bury it: if one of them goes to throw something out and sees their work in the trash, it hurts their feelings. We don’t want to hurt their feelings. But we also don’t want the clutter.

Once in a while, though, one of my daughters says, “I made this for you,” and she really means it, and isn’t just saying that because she doesn’t know what to do with her wet, glue-coated, sticky craft. When that happens, I put that picture on the refrigerator--which every young child knows is the preeminent spot in the house and is to be used for the accomplishments that make parents proud of their children. 

Although I quit making crafts for my dad in a time before my memory begins, I did spend most of my life trying to impress him. He’s a brilliant thinker, a professor, a better-than-average musician and now a missionary. At one of my multiple jobs, I run into people who have known him professionally for years, and many of them have told me that he is the smartest person they know. Even if he were an idiot, though, I cannot imagine anyone being a better earthly father. So, I want to make him proud.

Recently, though, I was praying in my car, on the highway, on the way to the gym, and something in me changed. I switched from wanting to make my dad proud to wanting to make God proud. I have professed, as long as I can remember, that God is more important to me than my dad is. I have always known that He is the only one I need to please, but as I was praying that day I felt my mind, my emotions--my guts even--switch from father worship to Father worship. And then the Holy Spirit filled my jeep and I started weeping and almost wrecked my car.

Someday I’m either going to die or meet the Lord in the air, and I’m going to get a tour of His house. In one room, maybe over the mantle, I will see the mouth-sword of Revelation 19. He might show me his many crowns if I ask to see them. He probably has them in a giant closet. His living room has to be giant, too, to get the throne in there. It’s hard to even imagine what other rooms God has in His house. Maybe it’s just the one huge throne room, with some nice couches for guests. He definitely doesn’t have a bathroom, and I don’t think He has a kitchen, either. After all, He is the bread of life and a river flows from his throne. I hope He has a refrigerator door somewhere, though. Wherever that door hangs, I hope that my humble, pasted-together life will be magnet-ed to it. And someday I will point to it and say to Him, “I made that for you.”

It's Necessary: Use Words

Have you ever heard the saying, “Preach the gospel at all times--if necessary, use words”? This is a quote often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, but scholars say he never said it and probably never even thought it. In fact, St. Francis was known in his own time (the turn of the 13th century) for his powerful preaching.

I’m not sure where or when I first heard that slogan, but I’m sure it was at least 15 years ago. It used to bring me solace. I can show people who Jesus is just by being a good person? That means I never have to be uncomfortable!

I wonder now, though, what my life said about Jesus. I know my high school classmates knew I was a Christian. I had some great Christian t-shirts. One of my favorites was supposed to look like a Jack Daniel’s label, but said “Book of Daniel” instead, and instead of “Southern Comfort,” it said “The Great Comforter.” I also carried my Bible to every class. And I held it on the outside of my other books, where everyone could see it. If anyone asked me if I actually read the Bible, I could honestly say, “Yep. In geometry class.”

Everyone who was aware of me knew that I never got into any trouble, and I felt like everyone knew I got straight As. (I didn’t tell anyone about the Bs in chemistry and driver’s ed.) I was usually really, really, really nice to people. Several of my classmates noticed when I courageously helped out a substitute teacher who was being tricked by the rest of the class. No one saluted me, though, for standing up for right that day. Instead, one of them threw my calculator out the window. How did any of those actions tell people that Jesus died on the cross to save them from their sins? Even if my classmates noticed that I carried around a Bible, how did they know what was in the Bible?

I realize now that you do have to use words. The only way St. Francis of Assisi’s faux slogan works is if you enroll in mime classes at your local clown college. With practice, you can show--not tell--how you were trapped in an invisible box, someone died on a cross and opened the door for you, and pulled you out with a rope. Somebody else will have to tell them that the box is sin, the rope is grace, and the hero is Jesus.

While it is true that if you are a Christian the Holy Spirit will produce fruit in your life, affecting your behavior, the good news of the Gospel isn’t that you are a good person. In fact, the good news is the opposite. While you were a sinner, while you were making someone or something besides God your ultimate thing, Jesus died for you.

“And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14, NIV).

A Story about Praying and Obeying

I took my son to McDonald's the other day. I didn't want to take him to McDonald's, but we were having a special daddy-son day to celebrate his fifth birthday, so he got to pick the place. I tried to convince him that he wanted to eat at a pizza buffet, but he knew he would get a free toy at McDonald's, along with an hour or so in the indoor play area, so he wouldn't budge on the issue. 

As we sat down with our food to eat, another man with another young child, a girl who looked younger than my son, sat down nearby. I overheard her tell the man--whom I later learned was her grandfather--that they had to pray before they ate. This reminded my son and I that we, too, needed to pray prior to eating. So we did. And they did. And our two tables ate at about the same pace, and we all ended up in the play area at about the same time. My son cautiously entered the maze of French-fry-grease-coated plastic tunnels into which the little girl had already charged. I sat down at the last empty table while the little girl's grandfather stroked his chin and paced in a worried manner, constantly craning his neck to peer into the tunnel windows to catch a glimpse of his granddaughter. I ignored him. I am on my third kid, and remembered my own worry the first time my eldest had climbed into those tunnels--before she was even two. She had gone inside and we didn't see her for over 20 minutes. (She is still alive.)

Just to pass the time, I started praying for the people in the play area. I looked at every single person, every boy and every girl and every adult, and prayed over them from my seat, that they would experience God's salvation. I prayed for the grandfather and the little girl last; I already assumed they were Christians, so I wasn’t as worried about them, but I had overheard him tell someone that she had leg braces and couldn't walk very well, which was why he was distraught over her time spent in the tunnels. I had already felt the presence of God as I prayed over other McPatrons, but when I started praying for the little girl and her grandfather, the Holy Spirit told me to approach the man and pray for him and the little girl.

Instead, I kept praying quietly--ceaselessly but also motionlessly. I wanted to boldly approach the man, but suddenly I thought, “He's going to think I'm crazy.” I wanted to do it, but I kept going through a mental list of reasons not to. After about 30 seconds of this inner-battle, the grandfather (Barry) approached me.

He told me that his granddaughter’s name was Abby. She was born with stage four brain cancer. St. Jude's Children's Hospital had sent her to a hospice because they said nothing could prevent her from dying in less than a month. They found a surgeon who performed brain surgery on the infant and cut out the cancer, and followed it up with chemotherapy when she was five weeks old. It is a miracle that she is alive at all. Now, she's been cancer-free for four-and-a-half-years. After I heard the entire story, and had heard Barry give glory to God several times, I boldly stood up and told him, “I felt earlier that the Lord was leading me to pray for you.”

I am thankful to God that he caused Barry to come approach me and made it easy for me to pray with him, but I can't help but think about how much more rewarding the experience would have been if I had stepped out in faith the moment God had impressed His will into my heart. After that initial faith-filled step, it would have been a breeze. I have been praying that God will give me another chance, and that next time I would immediately obey when God tells me to share His love with a stranger.

Don't be a Tithe-wad

I know someone who tries so hard to do God’s will that he’s miserable. This someone--let’s call him Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious--is careful about what he and his wife and two daughters watch on television, what music they listen to and what books they read. His wife wears a scarf over her head at church (1 Corinthians 11). He doesn’t force her to do that; she is just as pious as he is. He even quit attending a church he liked because the person who leads worship is a woman (1 Timothy 2:12). Most of the Church today considers these verses culturally specific to those to whom Paul was writing. Culture has changed, and the cultural reasons for giving those orders don’t exist anymore.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious follows his conscience in regard to those verses, but his conscience is strangely seared when it comes to tithing. It’s easy to put a scarf on your head when you pray, and it’s even easy to find a church where everyone on staff is male. It’s not as easy to give ten percent of all that you make to God, especially when you’re only making enough to scrape by as it is--even when you know that God has promised to bless your finances when you give the first ten percent to him.  

When God first gave the command to tithe (Leviticus 27:30), it was measured in grains and spices and wool and sheep and cattle and donkeys and anything else that an agricultural society could raise or grow. The world’s economy long ago switched from a barter system to a monetary one. Now our ten percent is measured in money. Can you imagine hauling a couple of sheep to your local church once a month? The Israelites didn’t even get to take them to the local church; they all had to take their tithe to the temple in Jerusalem. It wasn’t an easy task, and so they didn’t do it. In Malachi 3, God tells the people that their crops are dying because they aren’t tithing.

The Jews in Jesus’ time did tithe. The Pharisees loved tithing, because they could tithe in front of everyone else and prove how godly they were. What did Jesus have to say about that? “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former” (Matthew 23:23, NIV). Here Jesus reemphasizes the importance of tithing even while condemning the Pharisees for not following “the more important matters of the law.” So, we know from the Old Testament that the tithe is ten percent, and that tithing was a command from the Lord, and we know from the New Testament that Jesus told the Pharisees not to stop tithing, even while he condemned everything else they did.

Tithing is never easy, but it gets more difficult as you get older. When my wife and I were first married we felt poor. Three kids later, I look back on those days and realize that I will never again have that much extra cash. Now, my wife and I never have enough money, and yet we always have enough money. Hopefully you’ve heard this cliché before, and hopefully you’re listening this time: God can do more with 90 percent than you can do with 100. Make a good habit now; it won’t get any easier. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious will tell you that.

How to Stay Saved

Until recently, every time I came across one of Paul’s lists of the Fruit of the Spirit, I would pause and check them off like items at the grocery store. “Love, check. Joy, check. Peace, check. Patience, check -- just don't ask my sister.” I say “until recently” because my pastor has been going through the book of Galatians, and really preached to us what Galatians actually says instead of what we all thought it said when we skimmed through it.

Paul wrote the book of Galatians to the people of Galatia because some Christians came to the region from Judea and taught that to be saved they had to believe in Jesus PLUS follow some of the Jewish ceremonial laws. Paul writes to tell them this is wrong, and he tells them why it’s wrong. Only one thing saves you: faith in Jesus Christ. 

Jesus died for our sins, and there is nothing we can do to help Him save us. He did it all, once for all. So, what do you have to do to stay saved? Nothing! He took care of your sins, past present and future. The freedom we have in Christ is not just freedom from Hell, but freedom from the law, freedom from a to-do list. In fact, Paul goes so far as to say in 1 Corinthians chapters 6 and 10 that while not everything is profitable, “Everything is permissible.”

“But,” you argue, “James says, ‘Faith without works is dead’” (James 2:26, NKJV). And he's right. Of course he's right. You didn't think I was going to pull a Martin Luther and call James a heretic, did you? If your faith doesn't produce good works it is dead. The important question now is, what motivates a Christian to do good works? Is it fear? No. Is it obedience? Obedience is certainly not a bad thing, but that’s not our motive, either. We don’t do good works to stay saved, but because we are saved. Christians are motivated to do good works by the Holy Spirit.

Many Christians view the Fruit of the Spirit as their to-do list. Two misconceptions accompany that view. First, the Fruit of the Spirit is not a list of fruits: it’s a description of one fruit. The one fruit is described as being love, joy, peace, patience, etc., just like an apple is red, round, sweet, crisp, juicy. Second, it's the Fruit of the Spirit, not the Fruit of the Christian. If I am a farmer, and I plant a field of corn, it is not the field's corn. It's my corn. I am the farmer. I did the work. All the field did was lay there and get rained on. In the metaphor of the Fruit of the Spirit, we are the field, not the farmer. The Holy Spirit is the farmer. So, it's not a list, and it's not your non-list.

What does all this mean? It means you don't have to focus on rule-following. You don’t have to work at staying saved. All you have to do is love God. Your faith will have works because the Holy Spirit will produce His fruit in you.

We are Buried with Him

Disciplining yourself is a constant struggle, whether you are trying to discipline your academic habits, your diet or your spiritual habits. I, for instance, try not to eat sweets, but my wife does not try not to eat them. In fact, she keeps candy and cookies around the house at all times. Last night I came home from work and ate seven Oreos. Seven Double-Stuffed Oreos. I was ashamed of myself. I was so ashamed that I proceeded to drown my inner fat guy with chocolate pudding.

It’s not always easy to stick to the plan. This is especially true spiritually because we cannot see the immediate results of the plan. Aside from reading the Bible and praying, it’s not even always clear what God’s plan for us is. But there is one thing mentioned in the Bible that is both clear and easy, and chances are pretty good that you haven’t done it yet.

Matthew 28:19 records Jesus’ command that believers be baptized in water. “Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (NIV). The Word (John 1:1), through whom all things were made, tells us to get baptized. He said "Let there be light," and there was light. And then He said, “Get baptized.”

What is baptism? Baptism is a proclamation of your faith; it is a first step in telling the world that you are a Christian. In some countries baptism is a crime punishable by death, which is terrible but also ironic, because baptism is a symbol of death. “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:3-4, NIV). We go under the water, representing death to our old ways (pre-salvation, not pre-baptism) and come back up representing our new life in Christ.

Look back at Matthew 28:19. Notice that Jesus said to baptize the disciples, the believers. He did not say to go and baptize the babies of the believers. Nowhere in the Bible is an infant ever baptized; baptism follows a conscious decision to follow God. And if someone who was not yet saved did want to symbolize their spiritual life in a giant tub at the front of a church, they would just walk in, stand there for a while, and walk back out. Without salvation, there is no death to sin, no new life in Christ, no testimony, no symbolic dunk and no obedience. But, if you have confessed with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, baptism is a clear and easy way for you to stick with God’s plan.

Be Still

I don't like to give my mind peace. When my mind is unfocused, it inevitably wanders to either an embarrassing incident in my distant past or a day-mare about possible tragedies in my near future. My mind is apparently a bleak place. As a result, If I'm not working, writing, reading or praying, I listen to a constant stream of podcasts. I listen to sermons, sports shows, comedy shows, lectures, anything to keep me from slipping into a depressing side-stream. Even music doesn't usually hold my attention enough to keep my mind from tripping over the wrong kind of thought.

I have no idea what most people think about when they daydream; I don't know if everyone is trying to avoid mental snares that will depress them. I do know that no one likes to be alone with their thoughts. Why else would everybody be on the phone all the time?

One of the keys to living the strongest Christian life possible is being still in the presence of God. That is something that isn’t easy for me to do, but I know that my prayer life is enriched through it. So, I have to turn off the television, the phone and my iPod, close my bedroom door, and spend time in silence with God. While intercession and supplication are aspects of prayer, silence is, too. Prayer is not just the time to air grievances; prayer is a conversation with God. We get to talk, but we also have to listen.

In Jeremiah 42, the remnant--the poorest of the poor who were left in Judah by Nebuchadnezzar--asked Jeremiah to ask God what they ought to do next: stay in Judah or run to Egypt. Verse 7 says, “Now, at the end of ten days the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah” (NASB). I don't know why God waited 10 days before He answered, but I do know that Jeremiah was listening when He finally did. Unlike us, Jeremiah did not bring the request to the LORD and then get a text message that distracted him from listening for God’s answer.

Imagine if this scenario took place in your life. Let’s pretend that you are trying to find out whether you ought to go to college in your home town or go to a university away from your town. You have added the question to your list of prayer requests that you read to God daily. You follow the A.C.T.S. acronym: Application, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. You say “Amen,” and turn on the television. You usually watch "Judge Judy," but you have the remote ready to switch it to ESPN in case anybody comes into the room. You do this everyday, and [Your Name Here] 42:7-8 says, “Now, at the end of ten days the word of the LORD came to [Your Name], but he wasn't listening, so [Your Name] decided to become a politician and helped speed America toward its doom.” (Read Jeremiah 42 to see the parallels.) If only you had remembered that quietly listening for God’s voice is an important aspect of prayer.