Some of the other stuff that has happened over the last year has not been so great — primarily in parental relationships and, like most folks these days, business/finance. In fact, I have been through some real struggles of trusting in God. There have been times when prayers tasted dry in my mouth. I thought God was hiding and I didn’t understand why.

But I’ve had to learn something all over again, something I knew before and had temporarily forgotten. God is always moving, and He is always speaking. We can’t hear sometimes because the volume of our heart’s cry is too high. But it’s those times when true faith is forged in our spirit because either God is good or He is not. If He is good, He will do right by us. Jesus asked us to consider that if even earthly fathers who are marred by sin want to good gifts to their kids, how much more will Father God give us good things?

But if God isn’t good, then…well, who is? Who else can we believe in? We have to decide.

We have to believe in God’s sovereignty and find peace there, because the alternative is sheer misery. I LOVE knowing that God has something up His sleeve, and seeing a few glimmers of light recently has been quite a source of smiles for me. I hope you too will see something to smile about right now as God’s hand reveals itself in a surprising and exciting way!

Be blessed.

P.S. My wife points out that in times of injustice, potent prayer in the name of Jesus has power to change things. I hope to talk this more next time around!

One thing I’ve definitely discovered which turns a lot of pop culture on its head: love does not make you happy. OK, before you get the wrong impression, let me clarify: the emotions and expressions of love are incredible and definitely contribute to happiness. However, those feelings aren’t a given. We all have down days. We get tired. We get sick. We get frustrated with circumstances. People hurt us or neglect us. We feel misunderstood. Things just “go wrong”. We can’t expect to find some kind of nirvana where “love” makes everything great.

And for the Christians out there, I have to tell you something which turns a lot of pop religion on its head — God’s love can’t always be apprehended. Sometimes the depth of His love for me is staggering, and I know how much He cares for me. But sometimes I feel completely dry, empty, and void, and when I try to reach out to Him I get nothing but silence.

So what’s the answer? What do we do when we hit rock bottom? How are we supposed to handle ourselves when everything seems out of whack and we feel so…alone?

I think the answer can be found in the Bible, and it’s called faith. Yes, go ahead, roll your eyes, label me as another one of these woolly-headed faith nutters, but hear me out. By faith I do not mean accenting to certain intellectual propositions for which there is little evidence. I mean the first meaning I read in my dictionary:

Faith (noun): 1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something

To be truly happy, we must believe in something greater than ourselves. I find a very direct correlation between my faith level and my propensity to depression. I must maintain my ability to live by faith every day or my spirit will whither. As a Christian, my faith starts at the cross. I believe that Jesus is the ultimate beginning and end of the universe and my reality, and that everything I need to live an eternally successful and prosperous life (and I mean that in a spiritual sense, not materialistic) can only be found in Him. But my faith doesn’t end there. I also need to have faith in myself. In some of my darkest moments, I have discovered that God believes in me more than I believe in myself! I mean, if my Father in Heaven is cheering me on and rooting for me, then why am I holed up in a cave so to speak? (Hey now, Elijah had some moments of self-doubt and fear too! Read I Kings 19:9.)

But…there’s one more thing! I need to have faith in other people. I need to trust. I am convinced that without being able to give trust freely to people who are trustworthy, you can never achieve lasting happiness. There are certainly a lot of human beings who have done despicable things. Perhaps you have been seriously abused in the past and find it hard to trust anyone now. But if you want to find that sense of prosperity of soul and joy one more, you must begin to open your heart again. A closed heart is a dead heart. Happiness is the abundant life that Jesus talks about in John 10:8, and that requires walking the path of faith and trust.

I have realized something in the past few months. Relationships can bring out a lot of things in you, and some of them are pretty ugly. I have realized that I don’t trust the future. I’m pretty good at believing in people in terms of not concluding they have malicious intent towards me, but when it comes to believing that all will be well down the road, I suck at it. My level of confidence that I will continue to be loved, or understood, or treated well, or that I will be as happy as I am now is not high. Somewhere inside of me is an underlying dread that something bad will happen and it’ll all be over. This surfaces when I reach bumpy waters — instead of thinking the good times are the true reality and troubles will pass soon, I think that the good times are an anomaly and the hardships and despair are the real McCoy.

This is backwards thinking! My eternal destination is with God in Heaven! No matter how difficult things get, it is certain that “one day” I will be truly happy. I need never lose hope or let my faith wither. God is in control, and I am not — thank God!

I want to reach the point where I can weather the storm because I know deep down that “peace, be still” is on the other side. This is my struggle right now. If I am secure in my vision for the future, then I can relax and enjoy the little joys and wins that happen every day. Everyone says it’s better to “live in the moment.” Well, I can’t do that if I’m always worrying about the future. Faith is the antidote to anxiety.

I’m ready to move mountains, Lord!

Have you ever been surprised to discover that when a dream you’ve held dear for so long finally comes true, you aren’t necessarily feeling a sense of happy-go-lucky bliss so much as you are experiencing a heavy weight of serious responsibility?

Well, both have happened to me lately. And I’m learning a lot about how to steward God’s blessings in the process. I’m also learning how to find acceptance and peace in areas where my instinctual fear of failure might otherwise cripple my sound judgement and enjoyment of the moment.

Getting married is no small feat. And I’m not talking about planning a ceremony; I’m talking about planning a life together. I dreamed for so long of finding a wife — a beautiful woman of God that He had prepared for me. Then when I believed I had found such a woman, I dreamed that she would come to love me deeply and one day embrace me as her husband. The funny things about daydreams are that they float around in the air, so to speak, and are easy to push aside and return to at will. They are real in one sense, because the choices we make and the prayers we offer to the Lord are affected by our dreams, but they are ungrounded. Their roots are shallow.

When a dream becomes reality, it is no longer a future aspiration. It is HERE and NOW. It is in front of your very eyes. You are responsible for it. You have a mandate to take care of it — to steward it, to protect it, to nurture it, to water and fertilize it and make it grow. You don’t have an excuse. You can’t say you’re not ready yet. You can’t say you’re not experienced enough or wise enough. You can’t delay it. You can’t put it on a shelf and come back to it at a later time. Your dream came true, Mister. Your long-held desires were just fulfilled, Sister. The ball’s in your court now. Are you going to “man up”, take a deep breath, and play your hand, or are you going to chicken out and blow the whole deal?

Don’t worry, I have no intention of going anywhere. I am so happy right now. I am crazy excited about the next few months. Rosemary and I are having a wonderful time! Yet, even in the midst of all the joy and festivities, there is a weight that I feel, and I can’t shake it. I am now responsible for another human being’s life, a person I care deeply about. She has placed all of her trust in my hands. The strange thing is, I’m the one who asked her to do it, and now that she has, I’m praying to God I don’t do anything stupid to betray her trust.

I want to be a good steward. And I think I’ll be OK as long as I put my faith in the Good Shepherd. He’s better at this than I am. I know I’ll have all the help I need to make it through.

However, I do want to share something I’ve learned along the way, and it is this: just because something may be the right thing to do doesn’t mean that it’s the right time to do it. For instance, I know that at some point I will be hosting a video series with thoughts and discussion on Christian community life and church planting. But when I should start that series is something I keep submitting to the Lord. He knows the timing better than I do. Any time I’ve launched into something prematurely — and I often know I’m doing it since I’m filled with anxiety and confusion rather than peace and conviction — it ends up falling apart. But any time I’ve launched into something knowing that God has released me into that walk of life, everything’s come together in a beautiful way, and “flow happens” as Lance Wallnau would say.

Timing is everything. So as you seek the Lord’s will for your life, as you ask Him to show you your giftings and callings and the deep passions of your heart, make sure you include the WHEN and not just the WHAT and the HOW. In many cases, the “when” may be more the most important piece of knowledge you can possess.

When it comes to life planning, I suck.

And:

All the best things in life I’ve slipped into by accident.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about me coming to the curious realization that nearly everything good that’s ever happened to me was not the result of a devious scheme I hatched up to make my life fantastic, but just happened rather out of the blue through a set of strange and uncontrollable circumstances. I just “happen” to be at the right place at the right time with the right people doing the right things, and life unfolds. Which begs the obvious question:

Why do I grit my teeth and spend so much effort trying to make life go the way I think it should?

God has been showing me a lot over the past few months, and one of the things I’ve been learning is how desperately I need to trust Him with my destiny. You see, the interesting thing about destiny is that it isn’t so much about what you end up doing at the end of the road, but what happens to you along the way. To quote Yeesha from the game Uru: “some will seek the destination, but you should seek the Journey.”

Thus, getting back to my original statement, I really suck at planning my life. Just about everything I’ve sat down and planned out in great detail turned out to be a bunch of nothing. And just about everthing that came at me unawares and unintended ended up being awesome. Now don’t misunderstand me — I am not saying we should just sit back and be passive and let life pass us by. We need to be intentional and active about our attitudes and our behaviors, towards ourselves as well as others. What I am saying is that most of the time we waste our time focusing on the huge, overarching, big picture when we should be spending our time focusing on the little things day by day. God gives us a little, we steward a little faithfully, and then He gives us much. This is a Biblical principle and one that Jesus repeats in various forms over and over and over again.

So I give up. I don’t want to plan my life. I totally suck at it. God seems to be doing a much better job of it than I ever have, so I’d better wait on Him and let Him work His magic. Who am I to blow against the wind?

Well, all I can say is, surprise surprise! Most people don’t like harsh fundamentalists, whether they be Bible thumpers or Darwin thumpers, and frankly the atheist movement is not being well served by exalting the kind of angry, self-righteous verbiage that exemplify the work of Dawkins and his ilk. Our culture, our educational system, and our public square would be far better served by respectful, compassion, reasonable discourse on the subject of God, the supernatural, and the origin of the cosmos and life. The alternative is not pretty.

Only it’s a sham. Success is a moving target. Every time you get “there”, it’s not good enough. You want more. You need a new dream. You need further challenges. Once something becomes easy, it becomes boring. My grandfather was a brilliant and passionate man who could accomplish almost anything he imagined. Yet he died having truly accomplished nothing. His legacy was of a life spent always pursuing the next big thing while abandoning the previous thing before its time.

I never met my grandfather, as he died just before I was born, but I see that same tendency in me, and it scares me at times. Yet I know for certain that I am not the little boy that I saw in that home video any more. My identity has changed, or rather I have discovered my true identity. I am not defined by what I own, or where I live, or who I’m networked with, or how I dress, or the things I do. My identity lies in who God says that I am. For I am His child, precious in His eyes, bought with a price, hidden with Christ and seated with Him in heavenly places, destined to rule and reign with Christ for eternity. My Father loves me and I love Him. Jesus said “I and my Father are one” and Jesus brings that same depth of relationship to me. He can bring it to you, if you desire it.

I know God has big plans for me, and great things are in store. Yet that’s not my focus anymore. I grew up believing I was an Artist. Now I may be an artist in the sense that God has given me artistic talents to use for His glory, but I am not an Artist. Nor am I a “Computer Geek” (well… ). I am a disciple of Jesus. And that gives me great comfort, because success is always at hand! Empowered by the Holy Spirit, I can live each day in a love dance with God, doing His will with joy and abandon, and some day when I look back on my life, I can see that the more I spent my time submitted to Him, the more fulfillment and true success I achieved in my life. And that’s not just a legacy left here on earth but is something I can take into eternity with me!

I know this is an oft-used verse, but I think it is one of the most awesome statements Jesus ever made. We would all do well to keep this close to our hearts.

“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” — Matthew 6:33

Anyway, for the two people out there who know about my super-secret Web project, you may be wondering what the latest news is. Well, the latest news is sad: the project died due to a lack of time, resources, and motivating vision. Here’s what the project was all about in a nutshell: an innovative Christian social news + networking site that would provide really cool ways to aggregate content from exciting news sites, blogs, podcasts, ministries, and so forth with an emphasis on media and the arts — all the while fostering meaningful relationships that would encourage discipleship and Biblical training. Lots of neat ideas…WAY too ambitious. I honestly would need to assemble a comprehensive team and expend a lot of effort in order to get this off the ground.

The strange thing is that the genesis of this project actually looked a little different and somehow it got lost in the shuffle: a site that would be forward-looking and would encourage and challenge the Church in the West to envision a future age where the Church isn’t a dying institution divorced from the language, culture, and concerns of the day but is wholesomely engaged in restoration and healing and progress within the culture around it.

Here’s what I think: there are many innovative streams within the Body of Christ today: missional, emergent, charismatic, apostolic-prophetic, reformed, and so forth. There are probably more streams that I’m not even aware of. The problem is that, by and large, these streams are not talking to each other — or if they are, it’s largely on a footing of either distrust or sheer ignorance. And so we come to an inescapable conclusion: if we’re expecting to reach non-Christians or former Christians with the Gospel and convince them that the Church is the place to be, then we need to be doing a much better job of understanding and articulating what the Church actually is (and is not) and what its primary purpose is in relation to people’s everyday milieu.

I am a strong advocate of unity within the Church (see my three-part essay on Thoughts of Resurrection for more on this topic), and one of the ways I would like to see unity in action is within the process of taking a hard look at how we “do church” and which ways we can embrace change, uncertainty, innovation, and Spirit-led renewal in order to effect a positive and greater impact on the world around us.

In other words, I wonder what it would look like if Brian McLaren, Bill Johnson, Rick Warren, Frank Viola, and N.T. Wright all got in a room together and talked about the state of the Church. Just a thought. (And if you don’t know who some or all of those people are, that proves my point exactly. We need more cross-pollination!)

So there’s a brief peak into my brain today. What is the solution to this conundrum? That’s something I’m still working on. If it ends up becoming a new project, that’s awesome, but if not, I’m confident someone else will pick up the baton. At any rate, I will continue to post my thoughts here on this blog over the next few months as I wrestle with these intriguing questions.

What do you think?