Tag Archives: Reflections

Sermons, Uncategorized

All That God Had Done – Acts 14

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This year, we’ve been talking through the book of Acts in our Bibles each week. Commonly known as the Acts of the Apostles, but I think a better name would Acts of the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit has been the primary mover, the primary animator, and the primary instigator in the stories we’ve waded into. From the very beginning of Acts where Jesus tells his apostles to wait for the Spirit to arrive, to the day of Pentecost, where the thousands of people gathered are overcome with the Spirit, speaking in tongues that they can all understand despite not all speaking the same language, to the community of believers selling their stuff and using the money to take care of the poor in their midst. To the miraculous healings, and the miraculous conversions of Saul and Cornelius. The Holy Spirit has inspired, motivated, and moved these followers of Jesus to give of themselves, to bring others into the fold in a radical way.

I’m excited for us to talk more about this movement of God a little more today. Let’s pray together:

Lord, thank you for being here with us. God, may we talk to You and listen for You as much as we talk about You. This morning, please provide a message for us, something that seeps deep into our bones and changes us from the inside out. If there’s anything today that’s from me and not from You, God I ask that it will fall away and be forgotten. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear what You have for us today. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

____________________________________________________

Acts 14:26-28

26 From Attalia they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. 27 On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. 28 And they stayed there a long time with the disciples.

Last week, we talked about God’s radical inclusion in chapter 10. How Cornelius, a Gentile, along with his family was filled with the Spirit, about how Peter had a vision from God that made him change his thinking. God’s love and desire to be in relationship with humanity transcends cultural and ethnic boundaries in ways that Peter couldn’t have known without an interrupting experience with God.

Then in chapter 13, we see the church in Antioch prayerfully and obediently commission Paul & Barnabas to go and do the work that the Holy Spirit has for them to do. So they get going. They go from place to place preaching the good news about Jesus in the synagogues. The Holy Spirit is making this new mystery known: that God is reaching out to all people, not just the Jews. As they were going around, many people were coming to faith, people of high status and low status, Jews & Gentiles.

But it wasn’t all mountain peak moments of unity & kumbaya. Not everyone rolled out the welcome carpet for Paul & Barnabas. Yes, on their journey in chapters 13 & 14, there’s large groups of people turning to God, putting their faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and then being filled with the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit performed miraculous signs in their midst, but even so, in chapters 13 & 14 they get expelled from one place, they flee another because of the threat of danger, and in this place called Lystra, this crippled man at the city gate gets healed and because of that people think Paul & Barnabus are the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes and want to offer sacrifices to them, so Paul & Barnabas have to convince them that they’re not Zeus and Hermes. Then these Jews who had kicked them out of other cities showed up and turned the crowd against them, and Paul gets stoned and left for dead outside the city.

So this is a roller coaster ride. A lot of good, a lot of bad. They’re experiencing a lot of things that would make me want to give up, and yet, before returning back to Antioch, they go back through and encourage all these new believers saying “We must go through hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.” And they return back to their home church in Antioch, and they report all that God had done through them, how God had opened this new door for the Gentiles. How God is working in it all.

This singular focus that they have on what God has done and is doing among them sticks out to me. The way that Luke describes their report back to the church at Antioch sounds a little different than the way that I think we often tell stories from our lives. I think if we came back from a trip, even one where we felt God was leading us  as we went along, I think we’d probably describe it in us central terms: The craziest things happened to us. We were like preaching in the synagogues and a ton of people were there and they got baptized and now there’s these churches that are starting up because of it. And then the guy I was with got stoned, like not what we mean now when we say that, he got like rocks thrown at him and everybody thought he was dead. And then he was ok after all so we left town.

Do you see what’s missing from that description? Clearly God was in those stories, but when we tell stories we typically find a way to make ourselves the main character. And why is that?

I think there’s a few reasons. Maybe one of the most common reasons is that we maybe don’t want to over spiritualize things. We know there’s people in our world who use God as the mascot for whatever thing they want to happen, even if its not necessarily good, or beautiful, or just. I would guess a lot of us in this room came to faith within a group of people that had some doubts about the legitimacy of some other Christian groups and how they might interact with the Holy Spirit. I know that holds me back personally. As I heard Josh say earlier this week, and I think this is true for a lot of us, many of us probably came to faith within a group of people, that believed “Ya know, God just doesn’t work like that anymore.” So the scope of what we might contribute to God’s work in our world or our life is sort of narrowed down to explicitly answered prayers like for a loved one to be healed or for us to get that job we’ve prayed for.

But as we’ve been walking through Acts together, I feel like I want more of this. This kind of relationship with the Holy Spirit, where we can sit together and ask God to take us where God wants us to go, and trust that the Holy Spirit is going to take it from there. Where we ask God to present opportunities for us and actually are willing to accept what falls into our lap.

There’s a common phrase in the circles I think a lot of us run in. The phrase “it was just a God thing.” And I think we use this phrase to describe when something works out in a great and unexpected way. Like for instance, when I get a call out of the blue from a random phone number the day before a Mobile Food Pantry and its FedEx, saying they’re going to bring 30 volunteers, that was a God thing right?

I don’t want you to hear me knocking that phrase because I think it gives us a good shorthand way to talk about how we saw God work in our world or life, but at the same time, we shouldn’t limit our understanding of how God works to serendipitous God thing moments we encounter.

Yes, it’s a God thing when we run out of gas on the side of the road and a fellow church member sees us and just happens to have a gas can in their car, but its also a God thing when we watch our friend become a better father over the years as a result of their relationship with Jesus. It’s also a God thing when a loved one passes away and we have brothers and sisters in Christ who will sit with us, and grieve with us, and pray for us. It’s also a God thing when our neighbor trusts us enough to ask us to put their trash can out when they’re out of town.

The idea that we’re talking about is God’s immanence. This theological concept that the God who created our universe still is active and present in creation today. From Ephesians 4: There is one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all. Or as Paul tells the Athenians in Acts 17, in God we live and move and have our being… If we take seriously this notion that God is present with us in every moment of our lives, and not just a passive observer, then our language should reflect that belief. If God is an active participant with us in life, then we should talk about God in that way.

And Paul and Barnabas believed that. They report back to the church in Antioch all that God has done. God opened doors to new believers, God carried them through persecution, and God retuned them back to this family of God who sent them with blessing. God prompted, they responded. God lead, they followed. God did the thing, and now they are bearing witness to that truth.

During Sundays in Lent, there will be an ongoing invitation to share how you have noticed God in your life. Each week, there will be a link in the newsletter to upload of photo that represents a story. A story of how you saw God breaking into your world, your day-to-day life. As we’ve talked about today, God is immanent, meaning that God is here. God is with us in the big moments, and God is with us in the small moments.

There’s a 17th century monk, Brother Lawrence, who had this deep belief and passion for relationship with God. He was a cook and a dishwasher at his monastery in France. He wrote a book called The Practice of the Presence of God. In this book he talks about how God is present in the ordinary and the mundane things. He believed these basic everyday tasks, like washing dishes, was a way to connect with God. I first heard about his idea when I was like 18 or 19 years old. I had always wondered how it was possible for us to pray without ceasing like what Paul writes to the church in 1 Thessalonians. Prayer doesn’t have to be confined to our room at night on our knees with our hands nicely folded. Prayer can be a way of life. A way of inviting God into every moment.

As we talked about on the first Sunday of this year in January, both as a church and as individuals, we should be sailboats, not row boats. As sailboat captains, we still have a job to do, our job is to get the sails set up in a place to catch the wind. Let’s get our sails ready and go where the Holy Spirit takes us. We can only do that if we are living attentively, aware of and watching for the presence of God in our midst, when those moments of goodness, justice, peace, and love burst through the noise around us. Let’s walk open handedly into our world this week and, like Paul and Barnabas, report back all that God does.

As we go to the Table this morning, we remember Jesus. We remember the moments from Jesus’ life that we read about in Scripture, and we remember that Jesus is here with us in this room right now. We remember all the ways that God has worked in our lives, in big ways and small ways. In short moments of time and in the long nitty gritty of heart transformation. Let’s remember all that God has done in us, through us, and among us as we go to the Table today.

Let’s pray:

God thank you for being here with us today. Thank you for listening to us, and thank you for working in ways that we both see and don’t see. Help us to draw near to you and be more and more aware of how you’re leading us and working in and around us. Thank you for Jesus, through whom we have access to this relationship with you in the Spirit. Help us to be more like Him. In Jesus Name we pray, Amen.

This sermon was delivered on March 2nd, 2025 at the New Garden Campus of Woodmont Hills Church. You can watch it here.

Faith, Faith and Culture

Enough Blessing To Go Around

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Over the last month or so, I have been listening to the Bible Project’s podcast series called Firstborn: The Last Will Be First. They do really great work if you’re not familiar with them – making layered scholarly studied of the Bible approachable and understandable for us regular folks. In this series, they’ve been talking through the biblical theme of The Firstborn, which, when closely examined, plays itself out differently than I would’ve thought.

Culturally in Old Testament times (and still today in some sense), the firstborn son was to be the one who was blessed with an extra portion of inheritance and was to take on the responsibilities of the family leader after their father died or lost the capacity to fulfill those roles. While this may be the cultural norm, God often operates outside this birth order rule when choosing who to annoint, bless, or carry out His plans.

In the very beginning, God creates those who will rule over creation last, not first.

God favors Abel’s offering over his older brother Cain’s.

God chooses a people through the family line of Shem, the middle of Noah’s sons, not Japheth, the oldest brother, or Ham, the youngest brother.

God blesses the world through Abraham’s second child Isaac, instead of Ishmael, his oldest son.

God turns Jacob (or Israel) into a great nation, not his older brother Esau.

The list goes on and on and on.

While God is doing this, we see struggle from those not initially blessed by God:

Cain kills his brother Abel.

Ham seeks to establish himself as the family alpha.

Sarah struggles with Abraham’s second wife Hagar providing a son first.

Jacob and Esau struggle over Isaac’s blessing for the firstborn.

In all of these stories, there is an underlying human myth that is causing these conflicts: That there is not enough of God’s blessing for everyone. If we don’t get it first, we might get left out. This lack of trust that they will be taken care of causes people to do evil in the world: take life and deceive, jostling for position to receive blessing first.

This myth of scarcity: That there will not be enough for everyone, permeates our culture still today. Even in our Christian communities. We draw lines explicitly and implicitly communicating who is in and who is out. It is completely draining to me how much of what I see online is Christians debating who will receive blessing from God and who will not.

Jesus entered our world proclaiming a new Kingdom, one devoid of cultural lines separating those who are blessed from those who are cursed. Jesus was spreading the news that whoever believes in Him would be blessed. There is enough for all, just believe and come into the light (John 3:14-21). We don’t need to jostle for position, in fact, like Jesus we can put others above ourselves. In this new Kingdom, the first will be last.

Somewhere along the way, we have begun to follow people besides Jesus. We have been convinced that there is not enough, so we have to decide who is outside the blessing of God. Now we spend way too much time arguing, debating, and condemning the world that God sent Jesus to save.

Jesus came proclaiming good news to the poor and the outcast. Let’s do more of that. There is enough.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.  This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.  But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.“
John 3:16-21

LINK: Here’s a great 5 minute video resource on the theme of The Firstborn in Scripture!

Faith, Faith and Culture

Practical Wisdom – Reading James Together

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Last night we had the youth group students over to our house, as we often do. We normally have a meal together and then have a discussion-based devotional. I love being able to have them over, but sometimes the discussion is more difficult than others. Teens these days have a lot on their minds. There’s the stuff that has always been on teens’ minds: school stresses, crushes, self-esteem issues, family angst, but now all those things are amplified by their awareness of everything all at once thanks to smartphones, the internet, and social media.

With all of that swirling around in their heads, its hard to want to dive deep into Scripture – actually, I don’t think its a lack of wanting to, but its a quicker frustration with not immediately reading and understanding well enough to have some thoughts. In our culture of immediacy, sitting and soaking a text up can be hard because we’re not used to doing those things.

Last week, we read Hebrews 11. I’m not sure we got past verse 1:
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for, and assurance about what we do not see.” This is a great piece of text, but it’s so abstract! It’s so easy to get caught up in the semantics (just the English, not even the Hebrew/Greek) and lose the point. So many words to define. And after that we have to think about what this means for us, examples from our lives etc etc. I know that last week was fine, good, and helpful because we were together in our home reading the Bible, praying together, and talking about our faith, but afterwards Madeline and I were kind of left wondering whether we had all really “gotten it.”

Contrast that with last night. We’ve been reading through James as a church, and this week we talked about James 2:1-13, so last night we read it and talked about it with our students. It starts like this:

“My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?“

After we finished this portion, our resident eighth grader blurted out: “That is the easiest to understand part of the Bible that I have ever read!” It was a beautiful moment. She heard something from the Bible and it made sense to her. So of course, we didn’t call it a night and all head home, we talked about it. Sometimes following Jesus isn’t nearly as hard as we make it to out to be with all of our meetings and word studies. Simply put: Love everyone. Don’t treat people better or worse based on what they have or don’t have.

I’ve really enjoyed listening to, reading, and talking about the book of James with our church family over the last few weeks, and we’ve still got a few weeks to go! If you want to read and talk about the Bible with your family – or you want to think about how Christians should live – I recommend James as a great place to start. It’s Christian Living 101.

Blessings!
MC

Book Reflection, Faith

Book Reflection: The Pursuit of God

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If you read my last post, you know that my reading of this book comes on the heels of reading The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God has been a very fitting follow up.

The Pursuit of God is a classic for modern Evangelicals in the West, and it’s easy to see why. Tozer’s point: God is here with us, now, inviting us into a relationship. Because of that, the book asks the questions: why are we not taking advantage of that opportunity to commune closely with God? And how can we get there?

Perhaps my number one take away from the book is this: In order to move into the relationship God is inviting us into, we must acknowledge God in all the moments we live out: the big, the small, the mundane, the heartbreaking, and the joyful. In acknowledging God’s presence, we can give each moment over to God, aligning our lives more and more with God’s will, strengthening our connection with our divine Father.

What does this look like in practice? I tried to talk this out with our church’s youth group on Sunday night. I think the Apostle Paul encapsulates this idea well:

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17

Our lives cannot be segregated out into different containers, God is with us in every instance. Whether we’d like to or not, we can’t escape the presence of God, as David describes in Psalm 139:

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
 even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.“

Just because we haven’t been making ourselves aware of God’s presence with us in every moment, doesn’t mean God has not been with us. So how can we pray without ceasing? How can we acknowledge God in our midst in the different things we do throughout the day? What I recommended to our students is a simple prayer as they enter school, work, etc.:

God, please be with me as I __________ today. Make me aware of your presence in each moment, so that I may give thanks for the good in my life and that I may be comforted and strengthened when challenges arise.

Perhaps the bit from Tozer that connected me instantly back to Comer’s book is the multitude of things that we must have surgically removed from our hearts, so that God can fill the space. These areas differ for all of us, but we can be so preoccupied with our things, that God’s presence seems like a foreign concept or a faint memory from long ago.

Perhaps this preoccupation with worldly things is actually what’s burning us out. Jesus offers something better:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Trade in your load for the yoke of Jesus. Unburden yourself. Before this invitation, Jesus says this:

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.  Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.  All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.“

Let us become once again like little kids at the feet of Jesus: unconcerned with titles, square footage, and 401k’s. Let’s go about our lives holding the hand of our Father.

At the end of each chapter in the book, Tozer shares a prayer. I have adapted one that I found to be extremely convicting for my life and our culture. I will share that in conclusion.

The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing:

Father, I want to know You, but my weak heart is scared to give up its stuff. I can’t give it up with out pain, and I am trying to be open about that fear. I’m scared, but I’m here.

Please remove all the things that I have given myself to that have become a part of me, so that You may enter free of resistance. Then You can make Your home beautiful. Then my heart will need no light from outside because You will fill me with all the light and warmth I need. 

In Jesus Name, Amen.

Blessings,
MC

Book Reflection, Faith, Faith and Culture

Book Reflection – The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

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“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” -Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30

Though I have resisted the hype around the book for a couple of years, I read The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer this week. I guess I put it off for the same reason that I put off watching Ted Lasso for a couple years – it couldn’t possibly live up to the hype, right?

Turns out, I’m really glad that I finally read the book. Not because it was filled with earth shattering new ideas, but because it served as a really poignant reminder that our apprenticeship under Jesus, as Comer would call it, is not meant to be complicated, it’s meant to be really simple.

Our culture loves to complicate things through addition: another show to watch, another coffee shop to try, another trip to take. And while technology has made accomplishing tasks in our world so much more efficient, we still feel like we don’t have enough time. Through church sermons, teen talks, and devotional books, we encourage each other to make time for our relationship with God, but we shouldn’t have to make time for that relationship. The lifestyle of Jesus should be our lifestyle and we make time for other things out of that.

I often feel like I don’t have enough time in the week, but a closer look at how I spend my time reveals that I do indeed have time (quite a bit of it at the moment, pre-firstborn), I just choose to spend it on other things, like watching tv. The average American spends 35 hrs a week watching tv. The average American man has played 10,000hrs of video games by the time they turn 21. Yikes! There are other stats in the book, those are just top of mind because I relate to them so hard…

Basically the point of the book is this: do less worthless things, elevate God to the top of our priority list, detox from the phone that constantly distracts us with the mere potential of missing something, and importantly, practice Sabbath. In doing these things we will experience daily the full life that God has for us – the one we have likely glimpsed fleetingly at different moments in our life. We will experience a depth of faith, a grateful spirit, and rest in Jesus.

I believe that to be true. So this year, I am setting some intentions: spend more time alone at the feet of Jesus, further enhance boundaries around my phone usage, and more seriously practice Sabbath rest.

Blessings,

Michael

I recommend the book!

Uncategorized

With Love

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Reader,

I hope that this finds you well. As a society, we find ourselves in a *hopefully* once in a lifetime strangeness. Our lives have been disrupted, we’re concerned for ourselves and others, and we are grieving the loss of what we had hoped this season would hold. Weddings and graduations cancelled and postponed, relationships strained, and lives changed. I’ve had my days of despair feeling at my wit’s end with this lonely time, and I’m guessing you may have gotten there sometime over the last month+. I get it. This is hard.

And somehow in the midst of it all, I find myself more connected to what I believe to be the Spirit of God than I have in years. For control freaks like me, I guess in some ways that makes sense. I can’t even trick myself into believing that I have power over my situation right now. Maybe you’re there. I don’t tell you all of this to let you know what a spiritual giant I am, instead I tell you this to let you know that my ego gets in the way sometimes… ok probably a lot of times. And maybe yours does too? These days I am finding truth in the places that I had forgotten to look, or the places to which I had become dismissive. My heart is softening to the earth and those in it. I’m finding that in this more simplistic lifestyle I have been forced into, I can find the Spirit in the little things – the things I often look over.

Anyways, however you are responding to being a person during this strange time, I want you to know that you’re not alone. People love you and miss you, even when you don’t feel like it. Yes, even you! Thankfully, we can still connect in ways that I have scoffed at before. If you feel alone, reach out. Odds are the person on the other end feels similarly.

Breathe in, breathe out, see yourself. You’re actually awesome. A miracle in fact!

Love,

Michael

 

Faith, Faith and Culture, Uncategorized

A “too political” Essay for Christians Like Me

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I haven’t written much lately. That’s not because there hasn’t been anything going on in our world or in my life, and it’s definitely not because I didn’t have any thoughts about what’s been going on in the world or in my life. I think that for most of the last year, I decided that I needed to take a step back for several different reasons. I thought that I was talking a lot, and I needed to listen more. I was afraid that people may start to view me as too political (ugh, I know), or that I was ignoring the parts of myself that needed work because I was consistently pointing out the flaws and injustices of everyone else while ignoring the issues that I was causing or having to deal with. I think in many ways, I stopped believing that anything I did or said on the internet could or would affect positive change or growth in the world outside of my computer screen.

Let me state that I am not a perfect vessel for any sort of justice work, and I know that. But, I am going to try my best and likely say things imperfectly because I think I’m supposed to try. I’m afraid that there are many other people out there like me who want to say something, but they’re afraid to because it may come out wrong, so instead they don’t use their voice at all. So here goes nothing:

 

I thought I would eloquently write some memoir-ish style stories from my own life and weave them into many of the issues I care about, but that’s not where my head is at today. Instead I think I’ll just give it to you straight. It will save you some time reading and save me some stories for another time. There’s also too many issues swirling in my head to do that well.

Christian friends, please remember when reading: I love you. Even if I disagree with you, I don’t hate you. I love you.

Here’s some things those professing Christianity should consider in 2020:

Ending the Death Penalty:

In 2020, two millennia after the cornerstone of the Christian faith, Jesus, was put to death by the state, why is the Death Penalty still legal, and why are the majority of the supporters Evangelical Christians like me? In my home state of Tennessee, there have been 12 executions since 2000. There were not any executions in Tennessee in the 20 years leading up to 2000. Why do so many claim Pro-Life stances and then support the premature ending of life? Professed Christian and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has the authority to pause all scheduled executions via gubernatorial moratorium (California, Colorado, Oregon, and Pennsylvania), but he has ignored his standing invitation to go and pray with the death row inmates in Tennessee. Where is the grace in this legislation? Is the justice of the Kingdom of God found in such retributive justice? For each of our sakes, I hope that Kingdom Justice is found in other ways. Ending life is not a redemptive act. Jesus stood down a group of people ready to stone a woman, and they all dropped their stones and went home. Perhaps followers of Jesus should do the same.

Welcoming Refugees:

You’ve likely heard this before, so I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but after Jesus was born, his family had to flee to Egypt because the land of Israel was not safe for him. So yes, Jesus was a refugee. That’s in Matthew 2:13-23 for the fact checkers. Other of our Bible friends were refugees – like Ruth. Aren’t we glad that Boaz welcomed her? They ended up being some of the ancestors of Jesus. More than that, for the Old Testament lovers, God gives a clear command to the people of God in Leviticus 19:33-34, “Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” This really doesn’t seem too much like an optional deal to me. You are not in danger, these folks – like you and me – just want a safe place to live.

***OK, now we’re at the point where you might be about to check-out because what Michael has written is just too political. Here’s the thing: to me, our faith and our politics cannot be separated. Everything that we do and all the people that we support, reflect what we have put our faith in. We show what we believe and what we are trusting in with our actions. Political action such as voting or even endorsing someone on Facebook, reveals a little more of our priorities and beliefs about the world. So if you think I’m being too political, I disagree, but I don’t hate you. I love you.

Stopping Support for Un-Ethical Leaders:

I am weary from beating around the bush so much in 2019, so here goes, supporting President Donald Trump is severely problematic at best and dangerous at worst. Endorsing this president in front of your kids, grandkids, or friends is harmful to the brand of Christianity that you claim. Any person who openly speaks so offensively about women, minorities, and his peers while using the Name of Jesus to gain political power is not someone we should be supporting. If someone simply tweets a Bible verse and you interpret that as an offense against the President, what does that say about the President? For too long, good people like you and me have buried their heads in the sand while the President of our country pushes policies that harm marginalized people groups and serves himself. This level of moral impunity is not worth the Supreme Court Justice that you wanted. Please acknowledge wrongdoing for what it is and do not support those who bring it about. Yes, please pray for our president and other leaders. Pray that they will make decisions that bend our world towards justice. And if they are not doing that, Pray that they will change their ways, but don’t support someone who you think is doing wrong.

Stopping Support for War:

For the record, this is not me coming out as unsupportive of the members of our military. I have real life friends who are currently in the military and have been in the past. Just this afternoon, I was counseling a young friend who is graduating high school in May. We’ve talked often about him entering the military after high school. I don’t think it’s a bad idea for him. I hope that our troops are compensated well and their health – both mental and physical – is given high priority. What I don’t support is our government entering into violent conflict. Many of our governments leaders, President Trump included, claim Christian faith. A core tenant in the life and ministry of Jesus was non-violence. I honestly really struggle with understanding the Christian support of war, ever. Jesus talks of the blessedness of the peacemakers, but war seems to do the opposite. I know that the current situation is very nuanced, and I am not well-read enough to make an educated comment on our current state of affairs with Iran, but I can say, to me, war is never a good option. I don’t hate people who disagree, but I am asking that my fellow Christians, in order to follow Jesus more earnestly, to consider the how and why of your support or lack of support. Pray for peace.

In Conclusion:

If you disagree with me, I don’t hate you. If you think I’m being too political, I disagree with you, but I don’t hate you. I love you. Some things transcend political philosophy and enter into what I believe to be an ethical issue. These issues have become bigger than Republican v. Democrat or Liberal v. Conservative to me. I hope that in reading this you consider what I’ve brought up and haven’t simply dismissed it, but if you have, I don’t hate you. I love you. This year, let’s be people who wholeheartedly march towards justice and redemption for all people.

 

With Love,

Michael

Faith

Is God not mad… just disappointed?

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How do you think God reacts when we do wrong?

I asked this question to a group of 7-12 grade students from our student ministry last night. As always, I told them that there were no wrong answers. If the question asks what you think, and you say what you think, then you get the answer right. While they couldn’t possibly answer the question incorrectly – unless they were lying – I was hoping against hope that they wouldn’t answer, “I think God gets mad at us.”

And they didn’t say, “God gets mad at us when we mess up.” Hooray! Youth ministry win.

They gave the answer that I think a lot of people (including sometimes me) would, “I don’t think God gets mad at us when we mess up… It’s probably more like when we do something wrong and we get caught by our parents. Then they say something like, ‘We’re not mad. We’re just disappointed that you did this.‘ Like I don’t think God gets mad when we mess up, just disappointed.”

 

We’ve come a long way since the Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God theology. Most of us are passing on a view of God that isn’t this powerfully vengeful being watching over us who punishes us when we mess up. We’ve come a long way from our hell-fire and brimstone God who will throw someone into eternal damnation for swearing too much or having sex. We have replaced this angry, vengeful view of God with a view of God that is far more tame and human. In this view, God doesn’t want to punish us, God’s feelings just get hurt a lot. With this outlook, God is a friend who we didn’t sit with at lunch or a good parent that caught us in a lie.

At my private Christian middle school (circa  2007) we often unironically sang a song in chapel time called, Can He Still Feel the Nails. It goes like this:

Can He still feel the nails every time I fail?

Can He hear the crowd cry “crucify” again?

Am I causing Him pain, when I know I’ve got to change?

Because I just can’t bear the thought of hurting Him.

Yeah I know. A song that I think many would fairly deem manipulative.

While myself and many in my thought sphere have – in adulthood – laughed at the vast fallacy of that song and other sayings like it, I think we’re still walking around with much of the residue from those views. We’ve abandoned a view of God who hurts us because of our imperfection, and we have adopted a view of God who is hurt by our imperfection. So while we’ve been so right to run from this vengeful view of God, we may have sat down someplace that we need not stay.

 

This may get fairly philosophical for a bit. Roll with it.

I also just want to say, at a certain point, theology and theological arguments are in some sense broken and unhelpful because we cannot – though we may try – divorce ourselves from our different perspectives. So many people have different ideas and views on the Divine, and perhaps God is big enough to hold all of them. That said, I’ll try and make an argument that may be helpful.

So is God disappointed in us when we fail? Or when we don’t do our best?

A key underlying assumption to even asking this question is God cares about my own personal thoughts and actions. If God does not, then how could we disappoint God? We of course, cannot disappoint someone who does not care. So for the sake of argument, let’s say that God is concerned with me as an individual (my thoughts, actions, being).

Our view of God as a father or parental figure seems to really play into this view of a disappointed God. If growing up, my mom always told me, “Don’t smoke,” and she never saw or became suspicious of me smoking, she would likely expect that I don’t smoke. At that point, if she expects that I haven’t ever smoked, and she catches me smoking, she would be disappointed. Her expectations for me as her son were not met.

Our view of God as a friend can lead to this disappointed view of God too. If every week my friends and I play trivia on Tuesday night, it becomes an expectation of the friends in the group that I will go play trivia with them every Tuesday. At that point, if I bail on trivia, they could be disappointed with me. If I’ve never gone to trivia with them before, and hanging out with them every week is not an expectation, then how could they be disappointed?

Disappointment is a result of unmet expectations.

If we believe God is an omniscient, omnipotent being who is continually creating the universe, it seems unlikely to me that God would be anything less than fully aware of our past, current, and future pitfalls. Does God expect that we will be perfect or close to perfect? Does God even expect that we will give our best effort?

When I truly think about the bigness of God, quippy phrases like “Jesus expects our best” don’t hold up. It may make for a best selling keychain at LifeWay, but upon further examination, where do we even get that? An easy response would be to point me towards literally any of the commands of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. Good. But have you ever told someone to do something and not expected them to do it? Have you ever pointed someone in the right direction knowing it’s in their best interest, and still expected them to go their own way? I have, and I would argue that this is could be how Jesus felt.

Throughout the stories of Jesus that we have in the Bible, I have a hard time finding one that describes Jesus as disappointed. (Disclaimer: I could be wrong, and that’s the fun part about putting stuff on the internet.) However, I find a lot of times when people come to Jesus with expectations and leave disappointed. When the rich young ruler comes to Jesus explaining his goodness, expecting a warm embrace and pat on the back, Jesus asks for what he knows the man won’t give, obedience at the cost of his stuff. The man left disappointed. The religious leaders often came to Jesus with questions expecting to be affirmed as correct or to entangle Jesus, but they always left disappointed or even angry.

I would argue that disappointment is much more a human emotion that we feel towards God than the way God feels towards us. God lavishes love and grace upon us expecting nothing in return. No conditions. We don’t really get that because even in the purest forms of human connection, we expect some form of reciprocation. Even the best, most loving parents feel hurt when their children turn their backs on them. God is simply not this way.

 

To explain what God’s Kingdom and grace is like, Jesus tells the story of a younger brother who didn’t want to wait till his dad died to get his stuff and get on with it. This son goes to his dad and essentially says, “I want your stuff now, I don’t want to wait.” Storyteller Jesus doesn’t then say, “And the father was disappointed.” The father does what his son asks and gives him his share, and the younger son left. The father gave of his love and treasures with no conditions. While the younger son is off burning the candle at both ends, we don’t hear that the father is up all night weeping. Instead, what we see is a father who is waiting for his son to come home. When the younger son returns home, he expects his dad to be mad, or at least disappointed, but instead what he finds when he gets home is a warm embrace and a party. The only character in the story that is disappointed is the older brother, who didn’t understand the bigness of his dad’s love.

We are loved by God without conditions. Immense, pure love, way bigger and better than we love our girlfriends or our kids. Understanding that God’s immaculate love is unphased by our screw-ups or straight up screw-overs is going to help us let go of a whole lot of shame. Believing that we’ve in some way let down the Creator of the universe is a terribly shame-inducing way to live. And shame wrecks relationship. Our fear of disappointing God has for too long kept us from total communion with God and each other. When we feel convicted that we’re in the wrong, believing that God is disappointed keeps us from running home instead of pushing us to running home faster.

When we’ve taken God’s good things and twisted them for our own devices, God isn’t mad or disappointed, God just wants us home. A warm embrace and a party awaits.

Faith and Culture

boys will be…

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October 7th, 2016

It was a Friday evening, and I was in a hotel room in Atlanta. I had made the trip from Nashville to Atlanta to interview for a youth ministry position at a church there. It was a Friday night,  and it turned out to be one of those times when you don’t remember where you were because something significant happened specifically to you; you remember where you were because something happened out in the world and it seemed eternally significant. After meeting some of the church leadership for dinner, I had returned to my hotel room and turned on the radio coverage of the Chicago Cubs divisional round playoff game against the San Francisco Giants. Then, as had become a habit during the months leading up to that night, I turned on the news to see what was happening with the upcoming election. What I found was more than I had bargained for.

That night the Washington Post had released an Access Hollywood tape of a conversation between soon-to-be-President Donald Trump and television personality Billy Bush from about 10 years prior. They were on a bus pulling into where Trump would be making a cameo on a soap opera that day. The conversation that we all overheard seemed to stop the nation for a night. At one point towards the beginning of the footage, Donald Trump is telling Bush about a failed sexual conquest:

Trump: I moved on her, actually. You know, she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it.

Unknown: Whoa.

Trump: I did try and f*** her. She was married.

Unknown: That’s huge news.

Trump: No, no, Nancy. No, this was [unintelligible] — and I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping.

She wanted to get some furniture. I said, “I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.” I took her out furniture —

I moved on her like a b****. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony t**s and everything. She’s totally changed her look.

This was plenty bad, but it gets worse. The listeners can hear the laughter of Bush in the background. Fueled by the affirmation, Trump continues when they see Actress Arianne Zucker:

Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Bush: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab ’em by the p****. You can do anything.

As much as I didn’t want Trump to be elected and had been hoping that something – anything – would derail his campaign, those words made me sick to my stomach. My intestines tightened and my face felt flushed.

I clicked from news channel to news channel, and everybody was covering it. Showing the video. Using the p-word on TV. Somehow, even this was becoming a partisan issue. The Trump campaign and surrogates had already begun to spin this potential deathblow as merely Locker Room Talk. There were men and women alike claiming that this was simply boys being boys. Saying that this type of conversation was normal.

Thinking that this was surely something that people would be unequivocally condemning on social media, I opened up Facebook. Many of my friends had shared articles detailing what the tape revealed, most saying that this was unacceptable behavior from someone wanting to be the President of the United States. But what I found under their posts in the comments section was appalling. So many people replying things like this real comment thread from a friend’s post:

“How about supporting a liar like Hilliary.”

“Trump has his issues bit I’d rather support him than the alternative”

“I’ve heard all kinds of “locker room talk” but I will never stand for a women who trashed other women that were raped and abused in the White House..she admits she is different when public compared to when she is private..laughed when she got a man off with 2 months in jail for raping a 12 yr old girl..the list goes on and on..y’all are beyond insane if you don’t vote for trump..BELIEVE ME”

“Preach it Jeff!!!! I am way more concerned with Kill-liar-y’s actions than something Trump simply said over 10 years ago!!!!”

I was shocked. This wasn’t about the other candidate, who happened to be a woman. It was about human decency and the level of morality we expect from men in our society. I didn’t know what to do, but I felt like I needed to say something. People needed to speak up in reasonable and just ways. So I commented back in the thread:

Jeff, what locker rooms have you been hanging out in? I played sports in high school and spent a ton of time in college dorms with groups of guys, and never did I hear the graphic vulgarity that Donald Trump used while describing his sexual exploitations of women in the video. This “boys will be boys” attitude is the reason that so many are sexually assaulted every single day in our country. My heart breaks for our society that a man like this is in contention for the highest office in our country.

I don’t know what I expected to happen next. Maybe I had hoped that I would change everyone’s mind. Maybe I just hoped that I would “win” this Facebook bout with a stranger. Another guy commented back:

Michael Clinger, don’t even know you, this post just stumbled along my feed but give me a break man. Denying that you never heard vulgarity like that and you are a grown man is simply blasphemy.

For some reason, I remember this hitting me harder than listening to the words on the tape. It hit me harder than seeing people on TV defend Trump’s words. I had entered into a gunfight with only a knife. He was implying that either I wasn’t a man or that I had no integrity. Neither were true. Both hurt.

And there alone in my hotel room with no one to talk to, I cried.

 

You know the rest of the story. Donald Trump went on to win the 2016 Election in a sizable Electoral College victory. Despite being investigated for the last two years, it has been reported that Donald Trump himself was most likely unaware of any Russian interference and did not personally collude with a foreign agent to steal the 2016 Election.

Still the most shocking statistic to me: 81% of white Evangelicals voted for President Trump.

 

So how does someone get to the point where they will talk that way with another television personality? Or for regular folks like me, how does a man get to the point where they will talk in such a demeaning way? And then when that happens, how has our society gotten to a place where that is seen as normal?

Boys will be boys.

A statement commonly made around groups of boys and men of all ages from the womb to the tomb. I don’t know where this phrase originated, but when used it means that when groups of boys are together, they often do things that are reckless, adventurous, and mischievous, and that’s just how it is. We use the same phrase when a 8-year-old accidentally throws a baseball bat into the screen door, and when a pair of drunk 40-year-old men verbally assault an 18-year-old college basketball player. When the older 6-year-old brother cuts the hair of his 3-year-old little brother, and when a group of fraternity brothers throw a pledge into the trunk of their car and leave him there for hours.

Girls misbehavior is not so easily excused with a quippy phrase. Girls will be girls does not apply when two women get into a verbal altercation at a bar. It is not an excuse when two high school girls get caught peeing on their softball teammates mouthpiece.

Parents spend most of their lives warning their daughters about boys. Don’t be alone with a boy. Don’t talk to strange men. Don’t be out alone. Don’t be out late at night. Don’t wear that dress. Don’t talk that way. Don’t lean in for the kiss. Say no. Say no. Say no.

For all of the time that we spend warning our daughters about boys, we spend almost no time teaching our sons not to be the boys that daughters have to be warned about. We don’t teach boys that it’s not ok to refer to women as hoes or b*tches. It’s not ok to talk to your guy friends about women’s breasts and butts and what you’d like to do with them. It’s not ok to stand or sit too close to a girl that you don’t know. It’s not ok to ask personal questions to girls that you don’t know or just met. It’s not ok to touch girls that you don’t know, or even most girls that you do know. It’s not ok to whisper in the ear of a girl that you don’t know. It’s not ok to approach a girl that you don’t know who is by herself and looks distressed. It’s not ok to comment on a girl’s appearance in passing. It’s not ok to ask a girl in passing if she has a boyfriend or to ask what she’s doing later. It is not ok. That’s a lot, but I could go on.

And if you think that those guidelines are too much, or you think “How then can I even talk to women?” Just don’t. They’ll be ok, likely even better off.

A big reason that we have the amount of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment that we do is because we let too many of these seemingly small things slide. No one just wakes up one morning as a sexual predator. If we don’t address these issues as men to other men, nothing will change. 

 

There’s a couple more elements of the Access Hollywood Tape that are important to note, not because they are the most incendiary or the most clearly vile, but because they are the types of things that we don’t often callout or even notice. Understanding their problematic nature may go a long way.

When Donald Trump and Billy Bush get off of the bus, they are greeted by actress Arianne Zucker. After a brief hello and introduction, this is what happens:

Bush: How about a little hug for the Donald? He just got off the bus.

Zucker: Would you like a little hug, darling? [Zucker hugs Trump]

Trump: O.K., absolutely. Melania said this was O.K.

Bush: How about a little hug for the Bushy? I just got off the bus. [Zucker hugs Bush]

Zucker: Bushy, Bushy.

It’s a strange interaction to read through no doubt, and even if you watch it, it may seem rather harmless, but there is something underlying that needs to be spoken about. Neither Trump nor Bush has met Zucker before. These are strangers. When Bush asks for hugs for Trump and himself, it’s not a true ask. There’s power dynamics at play here, Bush and Trump with the clear leverage. “How about a little hug for the Donald?” is said in a way that you would tell a little girl to hug her uncle. Here’s the thing:

Women should not be treated in this way. At least in modern society, we’re starting to empower women to say no and teaching our little girls that their body is theirs and no one else’s, but what we’re not doing is teaching boys that it’s not ok to approach girls in that way. We’re teaching girls not to take it, but we’re not teaching boys not to make those attempts.

Women and their bodies are not objects for the enjoyment of others. Though no one would come out and say the contrary (hopefully no one would), we send that message implicitly as we raise our girls. When we pick our 4-year-old girl up from preschool and see that she’s playing with a boy, we ask “Is that your boyfriend?” As if she being just friends with the boy isn’t pure and good the way it is. We imply this when we say to our aging daughters, “How about a hug for Uncle Jon?” We send this message in churches when we tell our teen girls that they need to save their bodies for their future husbands. We have to be aware of the implicit messaging that is happening.

Men, clearly there are prohibitions for the ways in which we approach women that we don’t know, but there should also be prohibitions for the ways we approach women that we do know. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you’re her teacher, pastor, or relative, there are still ways that you should not initiate physical contact with a woman. If she wants to hug you, she will come in for a hug. We have turned our heads and looked the other way too many times when pastors or family members abuse their power and position. 

 

Here’s the last thing on the tape that I’ll talk about. Talk of sexual conquests and objectification do not happen in a vacuum. As a man who has lived a mere 25 years on this earth, I have both heard and said things that I regret about women in front of other men. It’s not uncommon for men, but especially for teenage boys, to speak about women in ways that are alarming. Locker room talk certainly exists, though very rarely to the graphic degree displayed on the Access Hollywood tape. In every situation regarding this kind of interaction, there are two types of people, the talker, and the enabler. On the tape, you should be able to figure out that Trump is the talker, and Bush is the enabler. In my life, I have been both, and I would assume that most men have. Both positions are born out of personal insecurities and a lack of conviction. Neither are acceptable.

Three months ago, I was with some friends (men and women), and we were heading to our cars in a parking lot in Brentwood. For those not familiar with Nashville suburbs, most would refer to Brentwood as a “good part of town.” I think to most people, “good part of town” just means bigger houses and whiter people. We stopped to talk for a minute, and we were laughing as two boys aged 16 or 17 were walking past us to their car. One of the boys said to our group, specifically the girls, “B*****s always be playing, with your heart and with your d***.” One of the girls I was with responded and the boys proceeded to yell back as they drove away. I was honestly shocked. As far as fight, flight, or freeze is concerned, I was in full freeze mode. Once again, my intestines felt like they had tightened up and my face felt flushed. I legitimately was having a hard time processing what I was feeling or thinking about it. My surprise regarding the situation pointed to my naïvety. The girls weren’t as shocked. They had experienced moments like that before.

As I reflect on that experience, I think about how it was just one of the two boys doing the talking. The other was there, laughing along as if it were the funniest thing ever. And that’s most of us men, most of the time. For too long we have sat on the sidelines and shamefully chuckled as we have let our peers believe that what they do and say is not only ok, but it is valuable. And I certainly know the tension of the moment. There are too many times to count in my life in which I didn’t speak up. Too many times where I was intimidated at the thought of being ousted from a group. But enough is enough. We have to start taking one for the team. Men, let’s call each other to a higher standard. It will be awkward and difficult, but what’s worth doing that isn’t hard?

There is a difference in acknowledging that conversations amongst men in which women are objectified are normal, and in viewing them as an acceptable aspect of life. In 2016, American Evangelical Christians showed that culturally, we are the enabler. As enablers, we don’t really believe that what is being done is right, but we have counted the cost of standing up to the talker, and we’ve decided that it’s not worth it. It’s easier to laugh along at what’s being said than it is to point out the talker for what he is.

We have failed in holding each other to a standard of morality and human decency. Churches have failed in extinguishing the fires of misogyny and objectification and, in many cases, have stoked them. More than that, American churches have for too long enabled male leaders to dodge the issues behind the facade of not wanting to be “political.” The “moral majority” that arose during the 20th century has become the immoral majority. Christians, we need to be speaking honestly about what we will no longer be standing for. It is time to rise up and cast aside our prejudices and broken systems. Even if that means blowing it up and starting over.

It’s easy to see these issues as too big to tackle, but the thing about time is that we can make major progress in just one generation. Let’s not hand down the same baggage to our kids that we were dealt. We have to start teaching boys from an early age that they need to respect the girls in their lives as equals, and that they need to stand up to other boys when they are speaking negatively or harmfully to or about girls. What our young boys hear now will shape who they become. Let’s stop shrugging off misogyny and objectification as “boys being boys” or as “locker room talk.” No more excuses, let’s be better.

Faith, Uncategorized

reflecting in the new year

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A new year is upon us. I feel fairly indifferent about it all. I think this is the first time in my life where I’m not excited to jump into another stage. 2018 was exactly what it was: a year. There were good days, bad days, and a lot of eh days. I learned a lot, and I grew a lot in 2018. Don’t get me wrong, I made some mistakes along the way, but that’s how we learn. I made some beautiful friends in the last year. Some days I was so content that I just wished those days would stretch on forever. Some days I was so discontent that I almost dropped everything and wanted start over in something else. Throughout all the wins and losses, the year was made special by those with whom I spent it. And I’m thankful for that.

Thinking about this blog and especially it’s contents in 2018, I am fairly happy with what I wrote and how I wrote it. Oftentimes, I’m writing as much to encourage myself to use my voice as I am to share my voice with others. Many people, maybe even most, find it more difficult to speak openly to flaws of the existing social systems than they do to affect change in their own hearts. I have the opposite problem. For me, to call on churches, governments, and others to do the right thing is much easier than acknowledging, even privately, the corners of my personhood that are not seeking justice and loving mercy.

I struggle with introspection. Strangely enough, I’m more self-reflective when I’m in the presence of others than when I’m by myself. Being self-reflective in public moments at least gives me something to talk about. I’m largely afraid of being found out to be who I most fear that I am: a fraud.

My family and close friends would be able to identify me as an often fairly disagreeable person. I remember growing up my mom would say things to me like, “If I said the sky was blue, you would say it’s not.” And she was right. My parents often referred to me affectionately as a Smart Alec, which turns out to just be the church appropriate way of calling somebody a smartass. I don’t really know at what age I became someone looking to poke holes in the rulings of authority figures, but by high school, I was in full bloom. I was never in trouble, ever, but that doesn’t mean that I was always easy to get along with. Youth pastors would be able to identify my high school self as that student who could be a great leader, but could also be a pain when they wanted to be. I quickly learned that there was always a way to pretty blatantly disobey while making it look like I had good motives. One time in high school a few of my friends and I walked out of the planned youth group events to have our own unsanctioned small group. As I made sure to tell my mom later, “We had our Bibles with us and everything,”

Of course I didn’t then have the self-awareness to understand that my desire to undermine authority figures was born out of my own insecurities. I know that now, so I have less of an excuse. I was insecure that I wouldn’t be known as smart, funny, or cool, but instead I was insecure that I would be simply known. Known to be only me, and I didn’t think that would be enough. On my worst days now, that scared teen still comes through.

What I didn’t know then was that who I am, behind the bluster and pseudo confidence, is enough. I still forget that sometimes. I often have to remind myself that I don’t have to earn my worth or have my worth voted on and judged by a panel of my peers. Any affirmation that I receive when I’m overcompensating doesn’t last in my heart because it’s not really affirmation of me, it’s affirmation of the character that I play. I need to remember that it’s ok to not know what to do and ask for help. I don’t have to have all the answers, and I don’t have to give all the answers to people who didn’t ask me what the answers were in the first place.

In the Bible in the book of Genesis, God comes to this guy Jacob in the night and God wrestles with him for hours. Eventually God knocks Jacob’s hip out of place, but Jacob doesn’t disengage, saying, “I won’t let go until you bless me!” So God blesses Jacob and changes his name to Israel, which means One who wrestles with God. Author Annie F. Downs takes this away from the story: God gives us a limp and a blessing. Our limps and our blessings are tied together, and we can’t have one without the other. For me this looks like being willing to address the brokenness and injustice of our systems (blessing) but at the same time struggling to address the brokenness and injustice inside of myself (limp). Or as Jesus might say, I am quick to attend to the speck in the eyes of others, but slow to attend to the log in my own.

The more conscious we are of our limps, the more we’re able to live into our blessings. I am enough, not because of what I’ve done but because of who I am: a person. And so are you. We don’t have to keep measuring ourselves against each other because God knows us and welcomes us without a pecking order.

 

So it’s a new year. And with this blog and my different platforms in 2019, I hope to put forth more introspective and vulnerable content like this. As I wrap this up, I’m aware that this isn’t the most eloquent thing I’ve ever written, but it is honest, and that’s where I need to be.

Thanks for reading!

-MC