Following a homeless man

Selling a home is a big task. Nay, a gigantic task! I mean, if you want to do it right, you’ve got to get yourself a good realtor, an appraisal on your house and then start deciding just how much profit you want to reap off of this beautiful abode which you’ve put hours of days of work into. Then come the open-houses… The place you come for sanctuary, to relax, to not worry about what you look like, becomes a high-maintenance department store window for the whole world to see. The carpet must be eternally clean enough to eat off of. The splash guards must be perfectly aligned with the gutter spouts. Piles of underwear upon the floors and nose clippings around the bathroom sink are no longer acceptable living conditions. After all, people are going to be walking through your house… people you don’t even know! This is where anxiety finds it’s breeding ground. Who knows how long this masquerade of Better Homes and Gardens® living could go on?

Then, days later, after only one person looks at your home, it sells. Your house is now sold as if God were beating you over the head with a steel rail engraved with the word “MOVE” all over it! You were hoping you’d be able to sell eventually for somewhere near what you were asking, but never did you imagine this quickly! A month ago you hadn’t even considered moving any time soon… Where are you going to move to now?

This is the scenario of the past few months for my wife and I. Amidst a summer filled with weeklong trips, day trips and VBS, we’ve been boxing up all the stuff we’ve somehow managed to accumulate over three years of marriage. We topped it off by moving out of our lovely home of two years on my birthday! (If you haven’t had the SHEER JOY of moving out of a home on your birthday, I really do suggest you try to arrange it.) We now find ourselves homeless and having a hard time either finding a repo-home that we’re happy with or are being out-bid by others on homes that we really like! It’s been a bit frustrating. Especially when you consider how obvious it seemed that God wanted us to move yet we’ve yet to find a place to move to.

But this is the God we serve. He doesn’t number the dots for us so that we can complete the puzzle on our own. He asks us to surrender and trust Him as our Leader and our Provider. That’s something that I’ve had a really hard time doing through all of this, yet I can see Him. I see my Provider in the countless people who have offered to put us up in their homes. I see my Provider in the fact that we’re not having to make payments on a home while we’re gone on trips this summer. I see my Leader saying “foxes have dens and birds have nests, but I, the Son of Man, have no home of my own, not even a place to lay my head.” It’s time to filter our own desires through the truth of Jesus Christ.

“Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.” –Matthew 6:32-33

Who among us is a big stinkin' failure?

I’ve been a little unfocused lately… a little out of my game… Come to think of it, every time that I turn around, I seem to find myself coming up short, failing at something or other on a daily basis. You might say it’s become a bit of a routine. Why can’t I be consistent in my Scripture study? Why do I find it so incredibly hard to get alone, be still and just be in conversation with God? Why do I find it so difficult to be sacrificial with my time? Will I never be able to put my wife’s needs and desires before my own without her having to tell me? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?! Probably the same thing that was wrong with Simon Peter. I’m a miserable failure.

Peter was as impulsive and enthusiastic as a follower of Jesus could get. But when Jesus informed the Twelve that each one of them would abandon Him, Peter’s reaction was, “Jesus, I don’t care what you say, there is NO WAY that I will abandon you! I’ll go wherever you go even if I have to die!” Jesus turned to Peter and said, “I tell you the truth Peter, that tonight, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!” Sure enough, soon after Jesus was arrested and put on trial, Peter denied even knowing Jesus not once, not twice, but thrice. Despite his best intentions, Peter failed Jesus. Kind of reminds me of myself.

I could stop right there, but the incredible thing is… That’s not the end of the story! Three days later, after a long night fishing, the disciples spotted Jesus walking along the shore. Peter jumps out of the boat into the water and swims to the shore to be welcomed by the God whom he had failed so miserably! That’s the hope that we have today. We have the unchangeable promise of an unchangeable God of grace who knows every disgusting thing about us and yet holds us in the midst of our failures. He already knows us and yet he’s calling us deeper in to service and relationship with Himself. We may be failures, but we are victorious failures!

“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.” –Ephesians 1:18-20

Fiction family

I was watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond last night (a show I never really appreciated until I was married). The episode, as usual, revolved around Ray, his wife Debra, his brother Robert and their meddling parents Frank and Marie. After Ray’s 11-year old daughter Ally asked her father, “If everybody goes to heaven, why does God put us on earth?,” hilarity ensues as the five “adults” ponder over the meaning of life. Of course, God tells us in the Bible that the only road to salvation for any of us is through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Sitting on the sofa, watching this fictional conversation take place on our television, I became sad at how hopeless and ultimately meaningless a life outside of Jesus is. This was by no means a new revelation to me, but in that moment, I found God reminding me that I was created to know Him, to love Him, to experience His love.

It is only through actively seeking Jesus that we come to experience life in the fullest (“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”—John 10:10). Are you knowing Jesus? Not just knowing about Him, but intimately KNOWING Him?

Ought three

A new year begins. Who notices? Besides the brief excitement during the few minutes following the stroke of midnight at the end of December 31st, what difference does it make? Sure we’ll make plenty of New Year’s “resolutions”… Promise ourselves to do or not do a lot of things that we’ll do plenty of regardless. It’s a chance to put a past behind us that will catch up with us anyhow. It means that we’ve got three hundred and sixty-some-odd days to start planning next year’s Christmas festivities. What difference does a new year make really except that it adds another year to our lives?

The difference is that we are loved by a Creator who incredibly unchanging. He remains the same this year as he did the year before and the years ahead of us. He doesn’t need a new year to start something new in our lives. He calls us NOW! Jesus approached Peter, Andrew, James and John, four men whose very livelihood existed in the fact that they were fishermen. Jesus approached them saying “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men” (Mark 1:16-20). He didn’t say, “Go get yourselves clean, get right with God and then, a year from now, maybe you’ll be ready for what I’ve got for you.” No sir! Jesus approached them and said, “Right here! Right now! When the only thing you know is being fishermen, I want you to drop your nets and follow me! I’ve got something bigger and better for you. I’m gonna change your life and build my Kingdom through you!” We don’t need a new year to get our lives clean brothers and sisters! We are LOVED by the Lord of the universe who approaches us in all of our filth and wretchedness and says, “Follow me. I’ve got somethin’ better for you.”

Shalom.