Do Something

Sometimes we set too low of expectations for ourselves and the people around us. If we want something to be great then it is going to take a little effort. If being great was easy and could happen with minimal effort then I would venture to say that most people would be great, as it wouldn't be much of an inconvenience to them at all. However, that is not the way greatness happens. Think of all the greats there ever were.

I think it is fitting to at least mention "The Great One" here,no, I'm not talking about Kevan Duke, but Wayne Gretzky. Wayne Gretzky didn't become great by watching TV and hoping he could be like the hockey heroes of his day, he actually got out and work on his skills. He practiced and did a little more than put forth an effort to become one of the greatest hockey players of his time.

Michael Jordan was another example of someone who desired to be great and did what it takes. But there are other people besides athletes who want to be great. Steve Jobs was one of the three guys who made Pixar animation the success that it is today, but it came at a price. The ladies that would clean the office of Jobs would often report that they would come in and wake him up in the morning because he was working so late into the night that it didn't make sense to go home to go to bed when he could just sleep in the office and wake up the next day ready to work. Pixar became a great movie producing company, but it came at a price.

Those who are willing to pay the price will eventually rise to the top.

The problem is that we have created a culture where it is acceptable to expect certain things to be given to you. That you have certain "rights" if you want to create something great. Whether it is resources, advertisement, production, education, etc. there is a thinking that we are entitled to be given something to start with. What we need is a vision or a dream of what we want and the drive to push through any closed doors to get to what we want.

When I was in high school I was a part of starting up a worship band at our church. There were two guys, who at the time didn't know a ton about what it would take to start a band, but they had the drive to make it happen. They were given no resources and were offered no classes on how to get a band going. They didn't have any equipment and had minimal personnel (Just for clarity, I was not one of the two). They had little to no support from the leadership of the church (in fact, I don't actually know if the leadership knew they were creating a band). We practiced in the basement of one of their houses and we weren't allowed to practice past a certain time because the drums would keep the neighbors up. When we were finally good enough to play for an evening youth service we weren't given much more help. We had no stage, minimal cables, and little space to move around... it was awkward, but we made it work. We didn't have fancy lights, smoke machines, or cool graphics. We simply worked with what we had which wasn't very much. But we continued to expand our resources and we appreciated everything we were given.

I have come to believe that if you want something to get done then you must do something. I know that is probably one of the top 1 million most insightful things you have ever heard, however, it is a truth that we so often overlook. Great things don't happen by accident. Overnight success is just not truly a reality. One person said in reference to this: "my overnight success was 15 years in the making." It takes time, it takes effort, and it takes consistency. If you want something to be great then work at it. It is no longer okay to sit back and whine about something if you do not want to be a part of the solution. Do something.

Mayan Thoughts

I am not an expert on Mayan thought, and I have never met a true Mayan, however, I think I can say with a little bit of confidence that if the Mayans were alive today they would be pretty annoyed with Americans the past few weeks...

Let's get one thing straight off the bat: the Mayans did not predict the world ending. The Mayans had seasons of calendars and December 21, 2012 was not the day the thought things would come to a screeching halt, it was just the latest date they had marked on a calendar. While it might have marked the end of something, the world was not the something they had in mind. This is not to mention that the Mayans did not account for leap year, so the December 21 date they predicted has actually happened several months ago.

Since this calendar has been discovered there have been many predictions of what would take place on December 21 have come out. They range from the poles reversing, therefor putting an end to all electronic devices in the world (much like the television show Revolution), which would probably ruin most people's Christmas'. Some even have theories about how other governments planted these thoughts in our mind so they could have an opportunity to invade the United States of America.

With so much mystery surrounding a date, much emotion has been elevated. For those who have nothing to hope for, this evoked a feeling of fear. For some thinking America would be invaded, a level of suspicion. And some just sat back and laughed as people flooded facebook with entertaining statuses.

And we all know what ended up happening today... people woke up, went to work, there were children who missed the bus on the last day of school before Christmas break, some lost their job, some were delivered news of being hired. There were babies born, anniverseries celebrated, and movies watched. Yet for some today was the end of the world, whether it was cancer, war, accident, or murder. For someone everyday the world ends and you don't know when that will be and neither do I.

However, I do believe that there will be a day when everything will be made right again. I believe that there is a new heaven and a new earth being prepared for us. I believe that one day everything will be the way it ought to be once again. One day, there will be a world where people don't live in fear, where oppression doesn't exist and divorce is not a reality. There will be a world where no child is left or abandoned by their parents and the word orphan will not exist. There will be a day when all the confusion about who we are will be wiped away and we will walk with the one who created us. I believe that this world will be filled with sons and daughters of the most high King and we will be known as His children. He will wipe every tear out of our eye and we will be made whole again.

Just in case there is any doubt, this is what I believe. I don't need a date for this, but I will continue to pray that this day comes soon.

Birthday Thoughts

Another year has come and gone and I would classify this past year as a growing one. I have learned a lot and been loved by many people over the last year. The amount of support I have felt has been escalated and I believe now more than ever that God is working in me and through me.

I spent the weekend with some of my friends who now live in Illinois, one of whom has a birthday close to mine. The weekend was filled with lots of food and laughter, good life conversations, disc golf, a few games of around the world and some good times. I even had a dream the night of my birthday that America was invaded by another country and I was the one who saved the day for a small number of people in Waynesville! It was pretty exciting times.

Something interesting that I found I do when I go out of town is stay with a family that I enjoy being around and just mold into their life and the things they do for a few days. It is fun for me to do that for some reason. I'm not much of a go off a do your own thing kind of person, so I enjoy being with other people and attempting to make their lives easier while I am there. I enjoy learning from the real lives of people in actually situations, not just in theoretical kind of conversations. Through one of the conversations I had while playing disc golf I found that I have helped other people more than I knew over time... someone whom I thought I was just learning from. This is evidence that you really can learn something from anyone... even me! It was just a short lesson on humility and it made me wonder how many lessons I miss out on because I think that I am the one who is supposed to teach them something?

I'm not sure if most people resonate with quotes, but one that has stuck with me for a while now is Albert Einstein's when he said: "Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life thinking it is stupid." This Christmas my goal is to be attentive to the things I am to learn, no matter where the lesson comes from.

Ballets and Squirrels: What Happens When Things Don't Make Sense

In a way it seems fitting, the kind of day it is today. Rain, wind, and utter drear. Outside in many ways mirrors what a lot of people are feeling on the inside and have been feeling for the past week or more. There has been national disaster that has affected many, half the nation did not get the president for which they voted, there has been an untimely death of a few young girls in our community, and to top it all off, for some people, the home is not somewhere they can find encouragement or sometimes even love. It all seems so heavy and so difficult to bear. For someone who likes to help, I feel like I am running around with a box of band aides in a field of people who have lost limbs.

When disaster hits it is a bit confusing because there is something that doesn’t quite fit in our picture of how things are supposed to be. We all have a general framework, though faulty at times, of how things should work in our day to day lives and when something disrupts that there are questions. Imagine that you were to go to a ballet or a high end musical where everyone brings out their best dress wear. The venue where the event is being held is top notch; high ceilings, fancy concession, and ushers with white gloves and 3 piece suits. Now imagine that you are walking to get a beverage from the concession before the show begins and when you look over you notice that one usher has one arm with the elbow bent out ready to escort someone to their seat, but the other is straight down with the hand bent out at a 90 degree angle next to the waist as a perch. On the perch hand there is a squirrel sitting there. This would raise all kinds of questions and would probably stop you in your tracks because it just doesn’t fit in the framework of what is supposed to happen at an event of such class.

The same is true of life. The reason that a squirrel at a ballet would raise questions for you is not because you don’t know what a squirrel is, you just don’t understand what it is doing at a ballet, because it doesn’t fit in the context of what is supposed to be at a ballet. The same is true with tragedy; no one has asked me what a hurricane is and no one has asked me what death is, but there have been lots of questions that surround these topics.

Through all of this I have been reminded of two things that were big encouragements to me when I have dealt with loss:

• “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Most of the time we want hope and we want to know that everything is going to be alright, but we discount this process that has been laid out for us of perseverance, character and hope. The way we get to a deeper sense of hope is if we persevere through our sufferings and allow that to build character within us. So you have to stand and be willing to persevere. Don’t look for the easy out.

• The other thing is quite simple and it comes out of the book of Ecclesiastes and it says:
“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.”

I hope this is helpful to someone. And I ask that you will join me in prayer for those who have had their world rocked recently and for those who are still dealing with the ramifications of something that happened years ago. Pray that we all can know and live as if there really is a hope that all things will be made new, because it is real and it is true.

Lifeboat Theory

I am currently reading a book by Donald Miller (who has quickly become one of my favorite authors), called Searching for God Knows What. In the book Miller describes a very interesting theory/metaphor that describes the world in which we live. He says to imagine that you were on a cruise liner (or insert your own desired catastrophe) and the ship went down and you ended up in a lifeboat with 10 other people. However, you realize after a couple hours of being in the lifeboat that the boat you are in can only safely support 10 people, so someone has to go or the boat is going to sink. You would have to spend the next amount of time trying to convince everyone in the boat that you deserve to stay in the boat. You would do whatever it takes to make others sure that you are so important that if you were to get kicked out of the boat everyone else would be so lost without you.

Now, it isn’t too difficult to see the parallels here between this hypothetical lifeboat and the world we live in each and every day. We spend so much of our lives trying to impress other people and make others think we are way more important than we really are. Some ways in which we do this is: we pack our schedules full of activities, we buy lots of things we cannot afford, we go on vacations somewhere a little more exotic than our neighbors, we work two jobs, and whenever someone asks how we have been we love to respond with a deflating sigh “busy.” It is so interesting thinking that we are doing something right be making ourselves so busy and filling our lives with so many things we don’t really want only to prove to some people that we don’t really care about that we are just a little more important than we actually might be. Most people try to align themselves with people who are really important so as to give more credibility and value to themselves. And since we are living on a hypothetical lifeboat we have to impress the people who are on the lifeboat with us because we are only as valuable to the lifeboat as the other people on it decide that we are; and if there is a unanimous vote that we are the weakest link, then we are forced to exit the boat, falling to our demise.

The good news is that we are not living on a lifeboat and we were never intended to have to prove our value to anyone else. We simply have value because of who created us. We have been given a value so much higher than we could ever convince anyone that we have since the time we were constructed in the womb. All humanity has value because of the one who created them. The same reason a symphony written by Mozart has more ears perk up than any sort of music I were to produce (aside from the fact people cringe when I produce music) is because the person who created the music gives it its value. The same is true with you and me: people should be turning their heads when they see us living our lives because the one who created us instills in us so much value that we don’t have to play the game the rest of the world is playing. We don’t have to live life as if we were sitting in a lifeboat trying to decide who was going to have to swim.

Jesus came to destroy that kind of thinking. The kind of thinking that says, “I have to get ahead, even if that means making the people around me look bad, or at least a little bit worse than I look.” He was so interesting because the people of high positions that thought Jesus should spend his time with them were only frustrated by him because he spent all of his time telling them they needed to care more about the people who weren’t going to get them any further in life. Jesus said those who make themselves last are the ones who will be first in the Kingdom of God. That takes the whole Lifeboat Theory and flips it upside down. Apparently Jesus didn’t think life should ever consist of trying to prove yourself inside of a lifeboat.

This next paragraph is an excerpt from the book and it raises some interesting questions about what we believe about Jesus. If it offends you, I am a little sorry, but not too much, because I hope that it inspires who to get to know Jesus for who He really is. You don’t have to, but ignoring the real Jesus doesn’t make Him any less real or His words any less true.

“Is Jesus sitting in the lifeboat with us, stroking our backs and telling us we are the ones who are right and one day these other infidels are going to pay, that we are the ones who are going to survive and the others are going to be thrown over because we are Calvinists, Armenians, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics; because we are Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals; because we attend a big church, a small church, an ethnically diverse church, a house church, ; or is Jesus acting in our hearts to reach out to the person who isn’t like us—the oppressed, the poor, the unchurched—and to humble ourselves, give of our money, build our communities in love, give our time and our creativity, get on our knees before our enemies in humility, treating them as Scripture says as people who are more important that we are? The latter is the Jesus of Scripture; the former, which is infinitely more popular in evangelical culture, is a myth sharing a genre with unicorns.”

This all is a tough bit to swallow and hits you a bit like cold water hitting your face early in the morning. However, I am convinced that the only way to experience this “life more abundant” that Jesus talks about is to live life outside of the lifeboat and realize that our value comes from our Creator and our Creator’s heart beats for humanity.

No Reserves. No Retreats. No Regrets.

In 1904 William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school. As heir to the Borden family fortune, he was already wealthy. For his high school graduation present, his parents gave 16-year-old Borden a trip around the world. As the young man traveled through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, he felt a growing burden for the world's hurting people. Finally, Bill Borden wrote home about his "desire to be a missionary."

One friend expressed disbelief that Bill was "throwing himself away as a missionary."

In response, Borden wrote two words in the back of his Bible: "No reserves."

Even though young Borden was wealthy, he arrived on the campus of Yale University in 1905 trying to look like just one more freshman. Very quickly, however, Borden's classmates noticed something unusual about him and it wasn't that he had lots of money. One of them wrote: "He came to college far ahead, spiritually, of any of us. He had already given his heart in full surrender to Christ and had really done it. We who were his classmates learned to lean on him and find in him a strength that was solid as a rock, just because of this settled purpose and consecration."

During his college years, Bill Borden made an entry in his personal journal that defined what his classmates were seeing in him. That entry said simply: "Say 'no' to self and 'yes' to Jesus every time."

Borden's first disappointment at Yale came when the university president spoke in a convocation about the students' need of "having a fixed purpose." After that speech, Borden wrote: "He neglected to say what our purpose should be, and where we should get the ability to persevere and the strength to resist temptations." Surveying the Yale faculty and much of the student body, Borden lamented what he saw as the end result of an empty, humanistic philosophy: moral weakness and sin-ruined lives.

During his first semester at Yale, Borden started something that would transform campus life. One of his friends described how it began: "It was well on in the first term when Bill and I began to pray together in the morning before breakfast. I cannot say positively whose suggestion it was, but I feel sure it must have originated with Bill. We had been meeting only a short time when a third student joined us and soon after a fourth. The time was spent in prayer after a brief reading of Scripture. Bill's handling of Scripture was helpful. . . . He would read to us from the Bible, show us something that God had promised and then proceed to claim the promise with assurance."

Borden's small morning prayer group gave birth to a movement that soon spread across the campus. By the end of his first year, 150 freshman were meeting weekly for Bible study and prayer. By the time Bill Borden was a senior, one thousand of Yale's 1,300 students were meeting in such groups.

Borden made it his habit to seek out the most "incorrigible" students and try to bring them to salvation. "In his sophomore year we organized Bible study groups and divided up the class of 300 or more, each man interested taking a certain number, so that all might, if possible, be reached. The names were gone over one by one, and the question asked, 'Who will take this person?' When it came to someone thought to be a hard proposition, there would be an ominous pause. Nobody wanted the responsibility. Then Bill's voice would be heard, 'Put him down to me.'"

Borden's outreach ministry was not confined to the Yale campus. He cared about widows and orphans and the disabled. He rescued drunks from the streets of New Haven. To try to rehabilitate them, he founded the Yale Hope Mission. One of Bill Borden's friends wrote that he "might often be found in the lower parts of the city at night, on the street, in a cheap lodging house or some restaurant to which he had taken a poor hungry fellow to feed him, seeking to lead men to Christ."

Borden's missionary call narrowed to the Muslim Kansu people in China. Once he fixed his eyes on that goal, Borden never wavered. He also challenged his classmates to consider missionary service. One of them said of him: "He certainly was one of the strongest characters I have ever known, and he put backbone into the rest of us at college. There was real iron in him, and I always felt he was of the stuff martyrs were made of, and heroic missionaries of more modern times."

Although he was a millionaire, Bill seemed to "realize always that he must be about his Father's business, and not wasting time in the pursuit of amusement." Although Borden refused to join a fraternity, "he did more with his classmates in his senior year than ever before." He presided over the huge student missionary conference held at Yale and served as president of the honor society Phi Beta Kappa.

Upon graduation from Yale, Borden turned down some high-paying job offers. In his Bible, he wrote two more words: "No retreats."

William Borden went on to do graduate work at Princeton Seminary in New Jersey. When he finished his studies at Princeton, he sailed for China. Because he was hoping to work with Muslims, he stopped first in Egypt to study Arabic. While there, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden was dead.

When the news of William Whiting Borden's death was cabled back to the U.S., the story was carried by nearly every American newspaper. "A wave of sorrow went round the world . . . Borden not only gave (away) his wealth, but himself, in a way so joyous and natural that it (seemed) a privilege rather than a sacrifice" wrote Mary Taylor in her introduction to his biography.

Was Borden's untimely death a waste? Not in God's perspective. Prior to his death, Borden had written two more words in his Bible. Underneath the words "No reserves" and "No retreats," he had written: "No regrets."

Why Not Talk Chicken?

I typically don't weigh in too much on topics as such, like the Chic-fil-a stuff, but due to my undying love of the chicken sandwich partnered with the best fast-food customer service there is, I simply feel that I owe it to the world to share my opinion (okay, slight exaggeration).

Personally, I think the discussion has gone a little bit overboard on both sides about whether it is right or wrong to eat at Chic-fil-a after comments that Mr. Cathy said when asked about his view of marriage. A lot of analysis went into the debate of whether Jesus would go be found at a Chic-fil-a or a gay bar yesterday. There were also debates as to whether eating a chicken sandwich did anything to build the Kingdom or not. The best response I saw was that Jesus would be at a gay bar passing out chicken sandwiches.

I would like to respond to the 'building the Kingdom' comment, but I will be brief. While I would not say that eating a chicken sandwich is 'building the Kingdom of God' I would say that it is good to know that when the rest of the world about to walk out, it is good to be in a Kingdom where you can know that when the world walks out you still have those brothers and sisters who will stand and say that we will love you anyway. Of course, it would be great if that was more often when our friends and relatives face crisis, that we stand with them when no one else will. If our response was to stand with and restore someone rather than ignoring an issue or even contributing to the issue at hand.

While I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman, I do not think a heterosexual person deserves more grace than a homosexual. I know that there are not a lot of people who would ever say that they deserve grace more than another, but their actions might say otherwise. I do not deserve grace more than the alcoholic, the one who has fallen to the trap and is addicted to pornography, or one who can't beat negative self-thought and struggling with suicide. For anyone who has been burnt because someone got this wrong, I would like to say that I am sorry on behalf of the Kingdom of God, whose plan from the beginning was restoration, healing and wholeness, not more pain, isolation, and oppression.

With that being said, free speech is free speech. I am entitled to my opinion just as you are entitled to yours. However, differing opinions do not have to mean division and they do not mean a lack of love. So let's keep opinions as they are and move on in love. And certainly, eating a chicken sandwich at a restaurant that claims to have a 'Christian view of marriage' does not mean that I hate anyone who has chosen a different lifestyle. My goal is to love others just as Jesus loved the institution He called the church, for which He literally gave up His life. So my proposal is that we all put down our 'hypothetical weapons' and start loving one another in such way and seek wholeness and shalom (the way things ought to be).