I realized something. I realized that I live in a constant state of guilt and worry. I don’t tell you this because I have some spectacular, four-step way to deal with it. It just is. Like a big fat frog sitting on my chest.

I hate frogs.

In my mind, he’s heavy, slowly breathing—heaving up, then down—in slow, unworried breaths, eyeing me with slimy black pearls behind thick greenish flaps of skin. And I’m anxious because that fat, oily freak, as calm as he may seem, could leap at any moment. So I can’t take my eyes off of him. I want to look away, get on with my life in peace, but I

can’t.

look.

away.

I’m obsessed with goodness. Even when I think I’m not, I am. I’m in a situation right this moment where I have to trust God. I’ve had tremendous peace over the whole situation (which is unlike me). But, as the circumstances linger, and the outcome I imagined must be going to happen, hasn’t, I’ve noted anxiety creeping back in. I catch myself thinking things like, “Maybe it’s something I did,” or “I’ll pray more. He’ll like that!”

It’s like I believe somewhere deep inside my reptile brain that God can be manipulated by my superficial spirituality.

I know I am loved. “Loved” doesn’t even begin to label it. I know that the God of the universe, who set the world spinning, the butterflies fluttering, and made creepy, freaking tree frogs spring out of his imagination, who knitted me together in my mother’s womb—the God of all things; the perfect God; the only God—cares about my life.

The facts are in my head,

in my heart, and smoldering in my everlasting soul,

but something in me fears He’s going to let me down.

I despise that part of me.

It’s the part of me that glares back for not always doing more, the part that barks guilt at me for doubting, or making the smallest blunder. It’s the red, burning circle in my brain that never lets me forget every mistake I’ve ever made and whispers that’s all I’ll ever be: 

My mistakes.

But the Truth doesn’t just shrug and let itself be outdone. Well, the facts do. As earth-shakingly astounding as they are, my pride easily pushes facts aside so that I can wallow in my self-deprecation. But not the Truth. The Truth comes. The person of Jesus Christ only has to whisper, and my pride shrinks back, my sin, which I have made so very large, shrivels—the smoke blown away, the mirrors shattered to reveal the facts and the Truth becoming one. A personal incarnation to encourage me, to remind me of his unyielding love.

How do I ever let that memory escape me?

I don’t know. But I do.

But God is dogged in his determination to love me. As many times as I forget, he will come. He will pursue me, even in my determination to sin. He will always pull me to Him.

And I am grateful. There is a song on my lips!

But I still hate frogs.

Christian Life

9:30:00 AM

 

By: Erik Guzman, Guest Blogger

Skin bags. That's what I kept thinking when I looked around at all the people crammed into the subway car.

My wife and I traveled some this summer. At home we see the same people all the time. From work to the kids’ school to family and friends, we experience a comfortable trickle of humanity. We drive everywhere we go. We sit next to people we know.

It wasn't that way on vacation. We spent most of our time in cities, traveling by train and subway. The variety and volume of people nearly knocked me over.  

There are so many people in the world, and most of them really aren't that good looking. Put enough of them in the same place and they throw off some nasty smells, too.

Walking down the street in the afternoons, warm whiffs of sickeningly sweet mystery stank often crossed our path. Our pace quickened while we wondered out loud, “Is it rotting garbage?” “Where's the dumpster?” “Maybe we passed a sewer vent?” A few times going down into the subway we had to sidestep a puddle and it was clear what the smell was.

The guy next to my wife in the subway car was holding a strap attached to the bar above his head. He was an average height. My wife's face is armpit level to guys of average height. He probably had a shirt on, but the discomfort of seeing my wife's face in that guy’s armpit already has my memory redrawing him sixty pounds heavier and in a tank top.

We couldn't move. There were so many not good looking people all pressed up against each other… so many. The subway car’s doors opened. Nobody got out. More got in. One lady had what I hope were just bug bites. The doors closed and we took off, a mass of flesh jiggling along in a dark, underground tunnel.

Hairy skin bags, I thought. We’re all hairy skin bags full of fat, meat and bone… and we’re all slowly rotting.

I like to think of myself as a generally cheery fellow, but that's kinda creepy, don't you think?

The Image of God

Later during our trip, I sat next to my wife on a bus. I stared out the window and watched the countryside roll by. I remembered the skin bags on the subway and had one of those thoughts that was so strangely clear it seemed to come from outside of me.

That mass of flesh is the image of God.

That's crazy... isn't it? Why would God create a bunch of dirty skin bags to represent him?

“Look at that mess,” God says. “That sweaty, bloody mess is what I look like.”

Ha! Ridiculous.

But then there’s the Fall of Mankind. We aren't what we were created to be. With our God-given freedom, we twisted and bent ourselves, distorting his image and hurting each other in the process. God had something else in mind. We were supposed to be glorious skin bags filled with the Spirit of God himself.

Life is hard. The clear thinking continued. Take care of one another.

I remembered a quote from Charles Bukowski: 

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't.”

Love. That's what I've always thought of as the essence of the image of God. The scripture says that God is love. When we see someone love self-sacrificially with no thought of getting anything in return (except maybe rejection), isn't that what God looks like? It has to be love in action, though. Love has to be incarnated... imaged by skin bags.

Love Incarnate

That's what Jesus showed us… a sweaty, bloody mess. He said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The image of God suffered on the cross to love all the other skin bags, to give up his Spirit that we might breathe in his original vision for humanity… Jesus… Love incarnate... God and man as one.

The countryside continued to roll by, and I continued to think about love in action as the incarnation of God… his image.

Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 32:37-40). The second commandment is like the first because we accomplish the first by doing the second. We love God by loving his image. 1 John 4:20 says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

It was all coming together, then I thought of a friend of mine who doesn't believe in God. He’s an amazing guy who is studying to be an RN. He’s obsessed with helping people, a truly compassionate person. He’s also a very vocal critic of religion in general and Christianity in particular.

Why? Why does my friend who doesn’t believe in God, and who thinks we’re all just walking accidental chemistry experiments, why does he care so much about skin bags? I had to know.

When I got back from vacation, I went to my friend and asked him why one cosmic accident should give a crap about the suffering of another cosmic accident.

You know what he said? He said, “I've been there and know what it feels like to suffer." He simply doesn't want people to go through what he's been through if he can help it.

There you have it, the image of God again… a skin bag who doesn't even believe in God walking around looking a lot like Jesus.

I told him my thoughts about compassion coming from seeing people as the image of God and manifesting love and divinity by caring for skin bags. He said he didn't get the idea. I told him about 1 John 4:20 and he just laughed and said, “4:20, huh?” I guess he thought I'd been smoking something.

I wished I were more like my friend, but I go traveling around contemplating the nature of God and skin bags while he simply helps them.

Just as we were about to wrap up our conversation, my friend said to me, “One more thing. Go easy on yourself, man. You're doing the best you can.”

There he goes again, looking like God. Yeah, I want to be more like my friend.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7).

Maybe today I'll go love a skin bag and enjoy being the image of God.

For more thoughts on the image of God, call 1-800-KEY-LIFE (1-800-539-5433) and ask for my free CD, Idols & Images.

Other People's Awesome

4:12:00 PM

I got fed up. I was in the ministry for about five years before I was done. That final year, which I lovingly refer to as the Year of Hell, shredded me down to my component parts.

Burned out isn’t the word for what I was.

I didn’t lose my relationship with God, (Just because some of God’s people can be jerks doesn’t mean He is) but anything that smacked of commercial Christianity made me throw up a little in my mouth. Over the years, I would try a little Christian radio or read a few pages of a Christian book, but I would always end up curling my lip at the sick feeling I got, then flipping off the station (sometimes literally) or closing the book in disgust.

LET ME EXPLAIN:

Now, I know that some of you have never had a beef with the Church, and you may be having a hard time understanding what I’m talking about. I’ll try to explain it this way:

I love pudding,

but not the skin.

And I feel like a lot of what Christians say and write and sing has a skin on it. There’s a plastic veneer that we call authenticity. It’s what we’ve decided holiness looks, smells, and acts like because we can’t quite grasp the real thing. At least that’s what it’s like when I do it.

THE GOOD PART…

I got where I couldn’t emotionally or mentally stand to be around it. But before this turns into the sad tale of a soul-hurt ginger, let me tell you something good that came out of all that.

I lost all my heroes.

Having grown up in the church, surrounded by pastors and Christians and having certain speakers and teachers and musicians shoved in my face as standards of truth, justice, and the American Way, I came back into the mainstream not knowing many of the faces or names (or, thankfully, the christianese… Apparently, we’re big on making much of Jesus these days.) that seem so popular among some.

They had their big platforms and their nice haircuts and thousands of Twitter followers, but they might as well have been my second grade bus driver for all I knew of them. It was disconcerting at first—I went back into this world with some of my old habits—as I was looking for voices to follow.

But then I realized something nice: 

Everyone was on equal ground.

                   Nobody was my mini-Jesus.

Nobody held sway over me, preaching down from their studio located in beautiful downtown Mount Sinai. I had no preconceived ideas about them. All I had were their words, and what they did. Both of which are easy to see on the web these days.

SO WHAT?

Some of them are easy to dismiss. If you’re overly political or every other word is about this sinner’s agenda, or that sinner corrupting our nation, I don’t need you in my ear holes. But others are harder to discern (You like how I used that oh-so-holy word?). But that’s always been the case. Finding good teachers is like dating in a way. There are some obvious nut-jobs that you will most certainly do well to stay away from, but then there are the seemingly normal ones that only explode into insanity weeks or months after you’ve been seeing one another.

So, there are a few people I’m watching right now.

I’m seeing who I can trust in this strange new (again) landscape. I just may not be watching them for what you think. Some of you are doing that thing where you nod slowly with your eyes closed because you think I’m talking about how important it is to watch our words and actions because of our (aaand here comes another super-spiritual word) witness. But that’s not what I’m talking about at all. I don’t care if he (or she) has a beer with his Shake Shack burger, or smokes a pipe because of their LOTR obsession.

I don’t care about their sin, I care about their repentance.

We’re always tripping over our own feet in one way or another. We all have our sins—some are just more obvious than others. I’d much rather have honest sinners than mask-wearing, self-righteous know-it-all's any day of the week.

I want brothers and sisters that are aware that they aren’t better than anyone else, nor are they anyone’s master.

I want people who’d rather give their time and love to people who can’t further their career rather than pander to those who can.

But I sure as heck don’t want any more heroes.

Heroes are for comic books. Christian teachers I will sit at the feet of will just as quickly wash mine. They will openly struggle. They will honestly doubt…

…Well, sometimes.

Because they’ll also be human. And they won’t hide that junk (They’ll try not to, anyway), because seeing their mistakes is important. In short, they will be what all Christians should be—so shocked by grace that we can do nothing but utter our thankfulness in front of the rest of the world—telling them all about our true Hero.

Christian Life church

12:50:00 PM

9:52:00 PM

The world is mad at us. I mean, really, really mad. If you’re of a softer constitution and you happen upon one of these angry articles, or YouTube videos, or tweets, or Facebook posts, or books, or… well, you get the picture—you will probably get the vapors and faint dead on the parlor floor. The point is this—a lot of people hate Christians and Christianity, and that’s not hyperbole. It’s a deep, fiery, gut anger that they probably couldn’t fully explain themselves. And some of you think that’s a good thing.

The Problem:

We’ve gotten the wrongheaded idea that whatever we do in the name of God must be okay because we’re doing it in the name of God. So, every time we do or say something that gets a non-believer angry, we smile to ourselves and think, “Thank you, Jesus. You said they’d hate us just like they hated you.” We’ve got that sentiment all kinds of wrong. If you look at the ministry of Jesus, the lost were far less likely to get angry at him than were the religious types. Moreover, the lost were actually drawn to Jesus.

The lost simply hate us now.

Does that seem right to you?

The Truth:

Jesus said that all the rules in the Bible can be expressed like this: Love God, love each other. (rf. Mt 22:36-40) So, if our beliefs lead us to anything other than love, they’re wrong. I know some of you are inking up your heretic stamp even now, but at least hear me out. (That ink is really hard to get out.) I’ll give you a few verses that back this sinful blathering up.

Look at Colossians 4:5-6, which says for us to, “walk in wisdom toward outsiders (non-Christians), making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” (ESV) Here, God is telling us to be calm, rational people who speak to others with grace and love, not signs and screams. So, is our speech gracious? Are our words seasoned, as it were, with salt? On the whole, the answer seems to be a big ugly no:

This is us protesting a video game based on Dante's Inferno...

Then, when talking about the qualifications for an overseer in 1 Timothy 3:7, Paul says, “people who are not Christians must speak well of him, or he might become the victim of disgraceful insults that the devil sets as traps for him.” (GWT) This is a pretty clear verse, and speaks directly to what we’re talking about. One of the qualifications for overseer is that the lost people in the community like them. Does that sound crazy to you? If you listen to the hateful things people claiming to speak for us are saying, you’d think that was an impossible requirement. Because you’d think those people are our enemies. 

It just doesn’t line up with the way those outside the Church view Christians today.

Do they think or speak well of us? No. No, they don’t. So, what does that mean? Well, it seems to indicate that we’re doing this wrong (read: without love). We’ve made enemies of those to whom Christ has called us to win with the Gospel of Jesus. Instead, we’ve made morality the god to which we are trying to win the lost world. Here’s the thing—the lost aren’t followers of Christ, therefore any rules Christians have don’t apply to them. Who are we to judge them?

Our job isn’t to make the lost better people, it’s to give them the same Good News we got. And, boy, do we need to hear it again!

The Issues:

Jesus said that the lost would know we belong to God by our love for one another (Jn 13:35). Someone, somewhere, got the idea that they would know us by our goodness. So, we sell Christianity (and I do mean sell) with loud voices screeching morality in nice suits and slicked back hair. All the while worrying that we might seem the slightest bit sullied (which we are) and so trying our best to appear more moral than the average Joe. Because, with all of our hearts, we think that seeming like we’ve got it together is the most important thing in the world. But, the worst happens when we start believing that. When we starting thinking that knowing the Truth is the same thing as being the Truth. “I’m not God, but I play one on TV!”

To get this straight, we’re black-palmed filthy with sin. Even our best attempts at morality, which seem to make us think we are perfect, are akin to a boy heating up his first microwave dinner and thinking himself a chef. Any knowledge we manage to get at just puffs us up until we spit it out so hatefully that any truth therein is lost on the hearer. We are liars and thieves and adulterers, murderers all, and if you dare think otherwise, you can add self-deluded to that awful list. We are constantly self-centered, hating that which we are not—the beautiful, the smart, the rich and the happy. Every one of us. Our well-crafted smiles plaster over a body riddled with sin…

…But we’re forgiven. We are loved. We belong to Jesus. And that’s our song.

The Joy:

We don’t have to pretend. We don’t have to act like we’ve got it all together. That’s not the message. No, I’m not saying Christians should sin willy-nilly. I’m saying to be honest about where you are, because it’s about what Jesus did, not how far along you are toward sanctification. What Jesus did is the Gospel.

That’s our witness.

It isn’t our goodness.

It isn’t our fake smiles and lack of television, or the fact that we have never had a beer.

It’s that we are just like every other lost soul out there—just as sinful and wrong—except that we found out God paid our debt. We said yes when we found out that He made a way to forgive us so that we could be a family again. Our inspiration, then, shouldn’t be how good we’ve become. (Let’s not fool ourselves.) Our witness is always how good God is, in spite of our sin. Any love I manage to show, any kindness I eke out, any love, it’s all because God lives in me.

So, yeah, I’m marginally better than I was, but it’s got nothing to do with all my striving and guilt. It’s got everything to do with my Savior. Our Savior coming for us, fighting for all of us, dying stained with our sin so that we could have a relationship with our Creator. That’s our story. Once again, that’s our song. Stick to that. Tell your neighbor you’re sorry you were so arrogant and judgmental, take him out to dinner and, if he wants to hear it, softly sing it to him.

Christian Life

10:00:00 AM

I have opinions. I love my opinions. I mean, I have a blog and a Twitter account that I type my shinier thoughts into regularly. And while It’s possible that all this opinion-sharing has something to do with deep-seated narcissism or some neurotic cry for the world to notice me (Love me, world!) there are a few things that I try my best not to talk about. As full of myself as I obviously am, I do attempt a modicum of restraint on things I feel will unnecessarily drive people away from Jesus.

As a follower of Christ, it’s easy to lose perspective...

And, sometimes, it's worth keeping it to yourself.

We have these varying beliefs about life, and the things we think are important.

That’s cool.

Some people are conservative and some people are liberal, some are vegetarians, others are unapologetic carnivores, some like chocolate chips, others like raisin oatmeal coo…

No, that’s too far, those particular people are probably not even saved… Raisins… Anyway, my point is: we’re an eclectic bunch with a variety of thoughts on various matters. (I mean, who thinks that’s an acceptable alternative to chocolate?) And variety among believers is totally acceptable. It’s part of what makes us unique parts of the same body. I’m not a cookie-cutter Christian kind of guy. (…They look so much like chocolate chips before you bite into them. It’s why I have trust issues!) But, despite your differing ideas, if you follow Jesus, you follow Jesus first and foremost.

PUTTING OUR RIGHTS IN OUR BACK POCKET

Before departing for Heaven, Jesus told his followers to go and “make disciples of all the nations.” (Matthew 28:19, NASB) We’re all pretty familiar with that, and we may even be passing familiar with Paul saying, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22b).

We just don’t adhere to it.

Here, Paul is finding common ground with unbelievers, suppressing his rights so as not to put anything in the way of the Message of Hope. I don’t think that sits well with us sometimes. We well remember that we’re supposed to tell the world about Jesus, but we are real jackholes about it. And, as someone has said, the truth without love ceases to be the truth.

Jesus himself said that the greatest commandment, the one that he said sums up all of the Law and everything the Prophets said was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind,” (Mt 22:37, NLT) and that the second commandment was similar, in that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. So if love is the theme in being a Christian, sharing the Good News in  love always means that others souls are more important than us or our opinions.

THIS MIGHT BE HARD TO HEAR...

But we must stand firm, you say. We must speak the truth about sin to the lost! Pass legislation to ban gay marriage and strip clubs, and keep prayer in schools! What if none of those things are our business?

...I know a lot of you just made a scrunchy face and said, “What?” out loud, but if you believe something to the contrary, you—like me for many years—were living bad teaching. Stick with me here. It’s as simple as one verse in one chapter:

1 Corinthians 5. In this chapter, the writer is clearing up a miscommunication with the church in Corinth. He starts off by saying that he’d told them not to associate with immoral people. That’s where most of us stop. Apparently, so did the Corinthians. But he goes on to explain he didn’t mean all immoral people. We’d have to leave the planet if that were the case. He meant immoral Christians. Then, he says IT in verse 12. “For what have I to do with judging outsiders?” That’s God’s job, he says.

So, what’s our job, then?

He continues, “Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges.” Do you feel a heavy something-or-other sliding off your shoulders?

I did.

I thought, “You mean, I don’t have to be the world’s mother? I don’t have to feel bad if I’m not stuffing morality down their throats?” I was flabbergasted, and then I realized something. I realized what my job is as a Christian—to love my neighbor as myself (Mk 12:31).

IT'S REALLY, REALLY GOOD NEWS

We spend a lot of time trying to fit a square peg into a round hole—attempting to get non-believers to act upon our religious ideas and personal morality when they don’t believe in God and so have no interest in our religious ideas or, perhaps, our idea of morality. It’s like trying to teach poodles how to fly. They have no desire to do so and grow angry at the person throwing them out the window. So, put down your cudgel and reach out to your abortionist neighbor. Offer a hot meal to that foul-mouthed young lady at the park. Hold the door open for the guy who thinks you’re a pushy, arrogant nut. He might be right. Show them Jesus, not your latest blog post against… all the things.

Here’s the thing, because of Jesus’ sacrifice, when God looks at Christians, he doesn’t see our sin—he sees the completely forgiven son or daughter that he loves. And the Bible is telling us to see the lost world in a very similar way. If it’s God’s job to judge them, then we don’t have to. We can look past their sins and see the human being for whom Christ died. We can befriend them without reservation and live out love in their lives with no strings attached and no judgment. Maybe we will earn the right to be heard. Maybe they'll have ears to hear about the God who died for them.

Maybe they will never become Christians.

That’s sad, but that needs to be okay. Because that’s not your job either. Living for God, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, and always being ready to give an answer for the Hope that you have. That’s your job. And they will ask.

So stop thinking of people in terms of their sin—that’s not cool—and see them as the humans made in God’s image that they are. Just love people, don’t debate them. The last thing we want to do is to drive people away from the Good News because of our political and social beliefs, no matter how right we feel those things are. It’s not our job to judge the lost. It’s our job to love them!

That’s freeing!

Winning an argument is never more important than a person’s immortal soul.

witnessing

9:55:00 AM