J.S. Park

Question: Does Everything Have To Glorify God? — A Mega-Post On When Idolatry Is Not Idolatry

Three anons (edited for length):

- My friends always say that everything we do should glorify the Lord. Because of that, we don’t go to the movies or read different books. If they see me watching Hunger Games or something, they tell me it’s all the Devil’s work. I feel ashamed because they say they are closer to God. What do I do? It’s hard to stay away from sin…

- Should all hobbies and interests SOLELY be for the Kingdom, or is it fine to sit down and write a horror story …? Even if you felt it was fun and maybe even cathartic to do so? I mean to say if we only wrote Theology 24/7/365/a lifetime, that Sherlock Holmes and Guy Montag might never have existed in our imaginations and that would be selling God-given gifts short. Is this right to think this?

- Hello! My mother tends to collect Asian statues from a junk store for me, my favorite things being Foo Dogs and the Mankei Nekos. However when some of the more strict Christians come to my apartment I can see them side-eyeing the animals and the smiling Budai as though they’re sources of evil. Is there any particular reason for this? My mother raised me to believe you can appreciate another culture’s lore and art without falling into the idolatry but the side-eye makes me a little nervous.

Well dang.  Please allow me the grace to write an open letter for the people who want to “glorify God” in dang near everything.

Dear serious brothers and sisters:

I know that some of you are very, very serious about your faith.  It kills you when an unbaptized heathen slips a bad word, you cringe at those “worldly” TV commercials, you scoff at pool halls and karaoke bars, and you think that old hymns and unleavened bread will save the American church. 

I understand.  You are sincere.  It’s great that you take this seriously — but if you’re squeezing undue pressure on rules about rules over other people’s external behavior, you will inadvertently turn a relationship with God into a moral-boundary-pushing competition.  This is just straight unhealthy.

You’ll forget the original reason why you had these rules, and perhaps ironically, your good intention of glorifying God will turn into idolizing these moral fences, and you’ll be so far removed from Jesus that you’ll make fundamentalists look like easygoing liberals.

I really do sympathize with all this: because maybe you had a friend who started off enjoying a slice of cheesecake after each meal and then he went up to black tar heroin.  You had another friend who listened to an Eminem album and now he’s racing cops and punching babies.  You knew a church that started singing contemporary praise and now they’re playing Highway To Hell on Sundays.

I’m poking a little fun, but I get it.  You’re afraid of the slippery slope into idolatry.  You’re worried for your children and your church and this world.  I bet that this is very real concern, and I do love you for that.

But can I just make a simple gracious suggestion? 

Please, please, please hear me in all humility on this, but maybe we could just relax about some stuff.  Perhaps many of these boundaries, which began with a noble heart, are actually causing some brothers and sisters to imprison themselves with a paranoia about being able to enjoy anything. This desperate race to “glorify God” can easily become a masochistic slavery that focuses on arbitrary self-imposed standards which do not bring us any closer to Jesus, but only breeds superiority or despair. 

This is simply legalism, and it kills us slowly.  The second you begin to idolize anti-idolatry, you enter into a very clenched, restrictive, airtight faith that sucks the life out of our joy. 

Certainly there are many things with which we should exercise discernment and caution — but shopping does not instantly mean materialism, and secular music doesn’t mean satan-worship, and enjoying the arts doesn’t mean we are witches and warlocks. 

I know this will make some of you cringe.  You are already yelling 1 John 4.  But can we balance this?  Apostle Paul writes to Timothy —

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons … They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

And also to to the church in Colossae —

Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

According to Romans 14, if something causes you or someone else to stumble: then don’t do it.  It’s that simple.  But please don’t hold those secondary rules over other fellow Christians.  Some can handle certain things, some cannot, and while we must graciously rebuke one another when we have a blind spot, we cannot legislate someone’s behavior to claim someone is “not glorifying God.” 

So yes, you can enjoy the cheesecake.  You can buy the dress and the video game and the brand name jeans. Go write your fanfic and draw your anime.  You can cry when the fictional wizard kills the other fake wizard.  You can feel good when you get a ton of likes and reblogs.  You can enjoy Mumford & Sons, even when they sing the f-word.  These are not sins unless you force them into sins, which is still pretty tough to do.  I trust you will be reasonable about these things and you will not wave them like a banner.  I trust you will keep Jesus at the center.  God is not a cosmic parole officer, and He wants you to have fun too.

Let’s also please be considerate towards other cultures, upbringings, and backgrounds.  What you think is sin is actually a preference, and your traditions are not written in stone.  None of us have the power to turn our claims into “Thus saith the Lord,” unless he really did saith that, and even then, do not lord it over others.

We can only exemplify Christ and pray that others will be convicted by the Spirit.  We pursue Christ first in all these things, and he alone will change hearts and grow our faith and keep our eyes focused on the essentials.

Keep the main thing the main thing, and go have fun please. 

When I was growing up, I was not allowed to go to the local pool halls. As I look back, I’m sure my parents did not want me to come under the influence of the unsavory characters who frequented those halls. So they built a fence to keep that from happening: “Don’t go into those pool halls.” The problem was I didn’t understand why, so I grew up thinking it was a sin to play pool (don’t laugh, I really did). Imagine my consternation when I moved to a Christian conference center and saw a beautiful antique pool table in the recreation room and godly men playing pool.

That is the way a lot of manmade “dos and don’ts” originate. They begin as a sincere effort to deal with real sin issues. But very often we begin to focus on the fence we’ve built instead of the sin it was designed to guard against. We fight our battles in the wrong places; we deal with externals instead of the heart.

— Jerry Bridges

 

“You can always see who’s a legalist because he can’t laugh at himself. He’s the one going around saying, “That’s not funny.”

— Timothy Keller

- Here’s a sermon I gave recently about how to glorify God and what that actually means, preached at a wonderful lively church that knows how to have fun and get serious too.

— J.S.

The Non-Theology Theology: The Fear of Being Irrelevant When Bad Things Happen

When the world goes crazy and life gets upside-down, it’s really hip to say, “Just be there for someone” — and you’re called a jerk if you say anything else.

I understand this, because it’s certainly insensitive to preach cold abstract theology at hurting people.  Anyone who does this: we throw them under the Religious Nut Bus.  We use clever counter-cultural terms like “theological bullshit meter” as if we’re really self-aware and we’re not like those other Christians.

But really though: I wonder how much of this is just straight-up fear of backlash and mainstream opinion.  I wonder how much of our talk on “relational intimacy” is really just more b.s. to cover for our cowardice in offering a clear lucid theology on the pain of a broken world. 

Aren’t people just trying to be “relational” to appear relevant? 

Are we really so desperate to cater to the modern skeptic with a watered-down version of progressive pseudo-Christian humanism?

Are we really so afraid to share a robust, vibrant, encouraging, comforting theology on God during our struggles? 

Isn’t God really the only one who actually can do work on our heart in the heartache?

Of course there should be a mourning period.  Of course we shouldn’t go all Jerry Falwell and equate disasters with God’s wrath.  Of course we can’t immediately jump to the moral of the story.  And yes, much of what passes for sermons on suffering is really just trite, impractical, inconsiderate nonsense.

Yet at some point: there must be something offered more than our silent presence.  There must be a worldview that accommodates for atrocities and tragedies.  We must have a hope that is both displayed in actions and spoken with words.  Our comfort means nothing if it’s merely comfort for its own sake. 

Doesn’t the Christian faith offer the best thing possible then?  It offers both the pathos and the logos, both a presence and a reason.  How can we keep silent about this?

Even if my voice shakes and even if it sounds crazy out of my mouth and even if you reject me: the least I can do is tell you about the one who saved me and changed me and is with me through everything that has ever happened.

Christians believe this is all going somewhere.  We don’t always know why, we don’t always know what God is really doing, we don’t always find it easy to trust Him. 

But we do have a hope that this is not the end of the story.  We have a hope more stable than our circumstances.  We have a hope that God is here somehow, working all things for an eternal good, displaying his infinite love on a cross, compensating for all the pain in human history within the most horrific tragedy of all.  God understands us more profoundly than we could really know, and He is not far from our hurting hearts.

I know it’s not always the right time to bring that up.  I just think nothing else can bring more healing than He can, and we could probably talk about Him sooner than later.

I don’t want to be ashamed of my theology.

After all, my theology is alive, risen, and here.

— J.S.

Question: Struggling With Depression and Faith

Anonymous asked:

I’ve struggled with depression for a long time, but this year it got really bad—to the point that I went on medication and have been seeing a counselor for a couple of months. Those two things have been extremely helpful and I have been feeling a lot better. However, it’s been super hard to pick things back up with God. Do you have any advice? I’m trying not to overwhelm myself, but even just going to church has been hard. What are some things I can do that will help?

Hey my friend, depression has been a lifelong struggle for me and it’s absolutely awesome that you sought help for your issue.  Very few Christians are willing to do this because of the strange stigma of “Only God should heal you,” which as you know, is only said by people who don’t get it.

Please allow me the grace to first share a few posts with you:

- Getting Back The Fire For God

- Is Depression and Anxiety A Choice?

- Why Did God Make Emotions?

I know there are no magic words to make everything instantly better, but I’ll share a few things that have helped.  Please know I love you and God loves you and I’ll be praying.

- The Christian life is a journey, not a light-switch.  Please have grace for yourself on that.

- Do NOT pressure yourself into a rockstar faith by setting an impossible standard for yourself.  Jesus had some things to say about people who did this to others, and certainly we shouldn’t do it to ourselves.  Don’t rush it.

- I totally understand that going to worship service can be uncomfortable and sometimes even harmful to recovering people — but also remember there is so much more to church than Sundays, and that Sundays are really the fulcrum starting point for deeper fellowship.  Find a mentor, talk to your pastor, an older mature person, a group of friends, get involved in a team, and keep trying.  Persevere with them.  God tells us that one of the ways to overcome deep valleys of the soul is to rejoice with our fellow brothers and sisters.

- As simple as this sounds, simply get to know God.  Be encouraged by His heart for you. Sometimes the simple act of intimate time with God (for even a car ride or a few moments in the morning) totally recalibrates my orbit back into His mission, and I’m empowered to know that the God of the universe loves me and has my back all the way.

- I have a habit of defining myself by my struggle instead of defining myself as part of God’s story.  I’m not saying this is what you’re doing, but your struggle does have a direction and an end goal.  Many of us just forget.  There’s a time and place to rant, but also a time to regain perspective on what’s next.

- Go have fun.  Seriously.  When I get depressed, I don’t always need theology and discipleship and long lectures and inspirational speeches.  Those are nice, but usually I just want a good burger and ice cream and a walk on the beach and a Netflix marathon and loud laughter about dumb things and cooking a Pinterest recipe for the first time.  Don’t ever think this is shallow: this is life too.

- Find a need and serve the need.  You are specifically wired by God to do something awesome as His force for good in the universe.  You are created to speak something into the world that no one else can.  I don’t mean you do anything to earn God, but that God is excited to work through you and is already orchestrating His purposes in you.  I don’t mean that being “busy” is some cure for our condition, but that the victory over our struggles must also have a direction towards something better.  Find a need, serve the need.

— J.S.

Blog Integrity: Forgetting To Practice What You Preach

I saw a quote written from a guy I know, and it was a great quote and he probably really meant it. 

I wanted to be gracious here, BUT — this thing he was telling everyone else to do is the very opposite of how he really is.  He knew the exact right words to phrase it, the keywords to tug the heartstrings, that slightly aggressive tone to preach to the choir, the vivid imagery and active verbs to pull it off. 

It felt so icky.  This was the paragon of a pot calling a kettle black.  It was black calling black black.

If he had said it any other way, with any kind of nuance or self-awareness or humility: it would’ve made sense.  He’s not a bad person or anything, and there is value in hearing from someone who is still overcoming their own issues.  But this wasn’t that kind of honesty.  It was all finger-pointing, just abrasive and hollow and laughable.  It’s the sort of thing that instantly makes you say, “Well-what-bout-chu?”

Come to think of it, I’ve probably done this many times.  I’ve preached what I haven’t been practicing.  I’ve told people to do what I wasn’t doing myself first.  I do think all of us can teach others without being perfect, but there’s a way to do that which can make us relatable or make us jerks.

Of course, we’re all in progress.  We have blind spots.  We will never arrive to perfection.  Yet I wished he had quoted someone else, or was less uppity, or maybe added, “And I’m working on it too.” 

I could only guess: he doesn’t know it’s his own problem.  He just knows it’s a problem in other people.  This is the part that makes me sick to my stomach with grief.  I don’t know how to approach someone like this because it’s too much work, too stressful, and not very worth it.  I just thank God that I have friends who are smarter than me and are not afraid to rebuke me in the face.

Maybe we could just write the stuff we really feel instead of preaching pretty ideals all the time.  It won’t kill you to be honest about your struggle.  We don’t need another soap-box; we need knee-deep stories of hope and heartache and grace.

We can admit: we’re all trying to get it right. 

We don’t need to talk from a pedestal.

God have mercy on our hypocrisy and grace for our every spoken word.

— J

Here is an exercise: Quote only those words that you are willing to do today. If we can’t act on what we quote, what is the actual value of it?

Expecting others to do it and not ourselves is just arrogance and self-centeredness. Find a struggle and persist in it. Then be willing to change. Wouldn’t you like these words to have meaning for generations after us? I would. So let’s not hollow them out with our laziness.

— Drew Tatusko

Question: Victory Over Binging

Anonymous asked:

Hey, thanks for that post about binge eating. I use food as a coping mechanism too, and I hate myself for it. Your victory gives me some hope though, so thank you. I did want to ask — are there other ways of coping that you developed instead of binge eating?

I’m definitely no expert on binging but I can share a few personal things that helped.  Please know that these are only suggestions.  Feel free to toss them or modify them as you see fit.  And don’t be afraid to seek counseling or medical treatment — there is zero shame for seeking help.

1) If I got an urge, I immediately confronted it.

This sounds obvious, but the second I was triggered to binge, I usually flew out the front door and took a walk.  Other times I got in the car to drive to the bookstore or Starbucks.  I’d call a friend to say hello or turn up the stereo full blast. 

These immediate actions interrupted my patterns and sobered me up.

You’d be surprised how quickly you can “break the spell” when you completely change your surroundings and introduce new stimuli.  It’s almost like you forgot why you even felt the urge at all.

2) I got really serious about exercise.

There’s always that buzzed feeling after a binge where you swirl down a hole of self-loathing.  I felt fat and disgusting.  I couldn’t stand to wear a T-shirt because of my stomach and I began wearing a huge jacket all the time (and I live in Florida).  Of course, feeling like crap about binging usually leads to more binging, and so the vicious cycle continues.

When I committed to exercising, that momentum really broke the guilt-spiral and incidentally encouraged me to eat better.  When I missed a work-out, I had to remember not to guilt-trip myself but make up for it. 

Eventually my old pants started fitting again.  I got back the old muscle definition.  That freedom felt too good to pass up, and binging became much less attractive.

3) I set an eating schedule.

This is obvious too, but it’s so much harder than it sounds.  I really don’t know anyone who keeps a strict eating schedule.  If you’re a spoiled American kid like me, then you eat whenever you dang well feel like it.

The thing about diets is that they’re really easy to do for the first few days.  It’s the same with faith, with exercise, with life.  But there is always a moment of temptation that cuts in where we decide to say, “Okay, just once.”  And then the just-once gets us on the wrong track again, because we tell ourselves, “Might as well forget the diet now.”

When your “just-once” moment comes, push through.  Do NOT compromise.  There is no magic trick here: you just have to be disciplined.  Throw away the snacks or run out the door or leave the potluck early or call a friend. 

4) I filled my mind with more important things.

After a while, I had to quit defining myself by my struggle.  I couldn’t keep thinking in terms of weight loss or calories consumed or snacks avoided.  No one can possibly sustain a life like that, or we’d be nervous wrecks completely idolizing the recovery.

I had to keep Christ first.  Every time I did things of eternal significance, my mind-space was filled with important matters and emptied of anything less.  My God-made purpose and Christ-anchored identity would then overwhelm my struggle.  Sure, there is a tension, and there are days when the struggle seems to be winning.  But this is human nature, and it’s why God has grace for us.  It’s grace that covers where we mess up and grace that empowers us forward to a life of freedom.

You are wired for something important, and God has given you talent and abilities and gifts to flex for His glory while you’re here on the earth.  If you pursue Him, you’ll actually end up forgetting your struggle more and more: because the glory of God will have taken up all your vision.  While many of us have a lifelong battle with certain issues, I also believe in a God who can have total victory over our old selves. 

I know this is probably lofty and abstract, but trust God that when you pursue Him, He will work in you.  Find who you are, NOT by what you’re not, but by who God says you are.

— J.S.

Jealousy vs. Generosity: A Generation Held Back

No one ever looks in the mirror and says, “I’m a jealous person,” because it implies other people are better than us or that we’re weak somehow, and we’re always trying to protect our egos. 

Because it’s so hidden: jealousy is one of the most destructive problems of all.  I’m so good at pretending I’m not jealous that I can disguise my hate as “criticism” and “observation” and “keeping it real.”  Certainly criticism doesn’t always come from jealousy, but you can tell when it does. 

I can attack someone’s weaknesses and presume a whole bunch of other weaknesses by clever extrapolation all while highlighting my strengths, and this makes me nothing more than a jealous petty little hater. 

During testimony-time at church when everyone is confessing all kinds of drug addictions and sexual deviance, I’ve never heard a single person say, “I’ve destroyed others with my envy.”  No one ever says, “I’m straight up drunk from haterade.”

When you see someone better than you — and we all do — there are two ways to respond.

1) Find ways to downgrade their human value, then rationalize your own contempt as justified criticism.

2) Celebrate their achievements and generously promote their growth while learning from them in humility.

When you know a younger person who has potential —

Jealousy has a way of cutting in and holding back the next generation.  Instead of seeing a future leader, you see a competitive threat who is messing up your mojo.

I’ve seen even the best of leaders clench their teeth as they raise up young disciples, ever-so-slightly keeping the youth at a lower level and withholding advice and downplaying all their success. What is that?  What makes us do this?  Why can’t we just hand over the baton? 

A leader’s job is to work yourself out of a job.  And you’re a leader somewhere, either passing on your life or hoarding it for yourself.

You have more wisdom and ability than you think you do.  When you talk about your passion, you’ll say things you didn’t even know you knew.  You have so much to give.

So it makes no sense to keep this all to yourself. We so often hold onto our positions of authority with a ridiculous nuclear death-grip.  But without passing it on, it all dies with you.

I know letting go of jealousy feels like we’re losing something.  It feels like we’re handing over years of sweat and hard work to a kid who doesn’t have to pay for the lesson. 

BUT — someone in your life did the same for you.  Someone learned through a horrible mistake for ten years and passed it on to you in ten minutes.  Every generation before you has accumulated valuable truth for you to be equipped, prepared, and successful.  And even if you never had this sort of mentor: you’ve always wanted one. 

When it comes to our friends and peers —

Our default mode is always to be envious. The only way to fight that is to celebrate what others have accomplished instead of reveling in how they’ve failed.

People can tell by your speech when you have devalued another human being.  They can see by your face when you’re bitter at people who are “further along.”  You find it harder to be compassionate, and you go for cynicism and grossly inappropriate speculation. 

Yet if you can truly lift up someone above yourself, you’ll be free of the prison of jealousy.  You will extract the roots of bitterness and anger. And it takes two seconds.

You’ll soon become the kind of person that others want to hang out with, including yourself — and you won’t be the hater who argues with angry counter-points by reblogging blogs and getting as serious as a stick in the butt.  Even you don’t like that guy.

Deeper than all this is the root of jealousy.  What are you really saying when you fall into a comparison trap?

“God, you owe me more than this.  A better universe, existence, opportunities, experiences, life, people, family — even a better car would do.”

It’s not enough to just raise up other people then.  It’s a fundamental root issue with God: because you’re really saying, “He’s not enough.  He doesn’t satisfy.  He doesn’t see me.  He doesn’t know what He’s doing.”

Honestly, I’m tired of doing this.  I’m tired of shaking my fist at God when I see someone more attractive than me.  I’m tired of trying to be the guy with the better story all the time.  I’m exhausted of thinking I know better than God, because I don’t, and the more I think I do, the more I run myself into the ground.

The Gospel tells me that I deserved nothing but God gave me everything.  Jesus could’ve stayed in Heaven in paradise: but he became poor so that we might be rich. He was crucified so we could live with him forever.

That revokes all my fist-shaking, foolish temper tantrums.  Then I’m just a bug trying to flag down a helicopter.  In my moronic selfishness, I forget that God is gloriously powerful and that it’s all His story, and not mine.  I forget He’s actually been pretty good to me, too. 

The clay does get to say a few things to the potter, but I’m thankful that I even have a potter at all, and that He cares, and that everything good is from Him, and anything else is not for me to worry about, because God’s on it.

It’s that icky word surrender, which doesn’t go over in our culture very well.  But the second you do that, your teeth unclench.  Your fists lower.  Your heart stops pounding and you quit getting all twitchy every time someone does something slightly better.  We no longer hurt ourselves by our comparison games.

Instead, you surrender to the God who made you you, and you accept who you are.  You quit trying to have the best of all worlds.  We quit trying to be perfect.  We quit trying to be God.  It turns out: I can get myself out of the way and celebrate others.  It turns out: God really is God, and He’s gifted me with all grace to let go of my petty weapons and build this next generation for His glorious story.

You and I — let’s lay down our arms and fight this good fight together.

— J.S.

Question: What It Means To Be Spiritually Mature

Anonymous asked:

Hi, I just wanted to say I really enjoy reading your blog! Thanks for taking your time to write these posts and answering questions. What does it mean to be spiritually mature? Does it just mean someone is far in their walk with God or receives many visions and revelations? Sometimes I feel like Christianity is a race to see who can achieve this maturation the fastest.

Thanks so much my friend.  I love what I do and I love every one of you I can serve, even if it helps just a few.

I appreciate your question too. You’re not alone in thinking this.  Many Christians are straight up exhausted with all these absurd spiritual parameters that we throw on ourselves.  Most of them are not from, you know, the Bible.

I get pretty sad about this one because I meet Christians who will say, “I just don’t think I’m growing.  I read the Bible morning and night, I attend church nine times per week, I talk with God at sunrise and in the car and during my lunch break, I evangelized to only four people this month, and I listened to a messed up kid for an hour without saying Jesus once.”

I keep thinking, “Dang dude — you’re actually growing a lot.”

When we set such high ridiculous standards, I think we go into morbid self-punishment by 1) measuring our quantity, 2) measuring our intentions, 3) grading our intensity, and 4) comparing to other “good Christians.”

I feel like Satan is laughing his butt off while we run around trying harder, doing more, hyping up our feelings, and defining our spirituality with distorted definitions.

While I could give you some very long guidelines about spiritual maturity, the simplest thing I can say is:  Spiritual maturity is about loving God and loving people.

Ask yourself: What kind of people do you think helped you grow when you hung out with them?  I bet my left foot that it was people who loved God and loved others. 

I don’t know if anything else really matters.  Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 that if you’re the smartest guy of all time, if you can predict the future, if you drop-kick a mountain, and if you stop world hunger, but you don’t love people, then it doesn’t matter what else you do anyway. 

You might have heard “love God and love people” a million times, but really: what else matters?

Spiritual growth then is unlocking any part of us that helps us move forward on this, whether it’s letting go of something or starting something new.

This is God’s goal for you too.  He beckons you to Himself by loving you first, and it’s through His Son that His love overflows through you in abundance toward others.

Everything God does is to grow the Greatest Commandment in you. 

He gives you His own Holy Spirit to flex His fruits through you like patience, kindness, and self-control. 

He commands us to go and make disciples so that others would be invited into the Story of God. 

He gives us commands that give us freedom and wisdom for our own good and joy and harmony with one another.

He sent His Son as both an example and a savior so we could become like Jesus — who loved God and loved people.

When we get to this place of loving God for who He is and loving people without expecting anything back, then the exhausting race stops.  We’re no longer performing to “earn God” somehow, because we already have His approval.  We no longer need to impress others because we’re loving them regardless of how they respond. 

Those not driven by grace — the knowledge that God absolutely loves us despite us — are constantly punishing themselves towards an impossible standard that is really just self-slavery.

The mature Christian is able to act out of the God-initiated love in their own heart to move towards God and people without expectation or competition.  It’s the perfect motivation of non-motivation, because grace is its own self-sustaining empowerment.

It’s tough to get to that sort of mindset, and it’s certainly a messy journey.  But I believe the more we press into the confidence of knowing that God eternally loves us through His Son, then the more we can loosen the chains of all that stands in our way: even if it’s ourselves.

“Do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people he has made?”

— Francis Chan

— J.S.

Question: Maintaining Faith After Moving Away

Anonymous asked:

I feel like I rely too much on my church, the pastor’s sermons, and the community for my faith. Now that I’m away from my home church, my time spent with God has been little to none. Having an intimate relationship with God has never made sense to me which is why I depend on sermons and leaders’ words because its a source of immediate answers. I tried doing QTs regularly, praying, etc. but I feel like it’s one-way and I’m talking to a wall. What should I do before I completely fall away?

Hey friend, I’ll let you in on a big Christian secret.

Even if you had an amazing non-mega megachurch with an articulate young tatted hipster pastor and perfectly loving accountability partners and undiscovered podcasts from C.H. Spurgeon and your roommates were C.S. Lewis and Pope Francis  — none of this will make your journey of faith a smooth ride forever. 

It would definitely help.  But I’ve seen many Christians in wonderful churches still struggle in their daily walk.

Because you and I — we’re human.  It happens.  Who knows why we suddenly get sad for no reason?  Or happy for the same non-reason?  Who knows why we change just as quickly as the weather?  Who knows why we get tired of stuff and fall out of touch and change our preferences every hour?

All I can say to that is we are squishy fragile flesh-and-blood beings: and we can’t be so hard on ourselves about it.

You might feel like you’re falling away and you’re not praying “enough,” and I understand that: but please don’t let this feeling trick you into thinking you’ve lost God.  Please do not grade yourself on a ridiculous standard that unfairly judges you. 

I know a lot of high schoolers who graduate and will miss church a few times, and then think, “I don’t feel God anymore, and it’s all my fault.”  Which keeps them from going to church again because they’ve “lost God,” and it’s this vicious cycle of self-condemnation when all I want to yell is, Relax bro.

If listening to sermons helps you, then cool. If listening to leaders and mentors and peers helps you, be blessed.  God speaks through them.  We don’t need to set up a false dichotomy where getting advice from a friend has somehow become “idolatry” in place of God.  Approaching God through prayer and Scripture is not an act of religious compensation for all the times we’ve neglected Him.  That would be too easy.  And even if that’s so, then lean into God’s grace with your whole being and remember that He receives you in any condition.

Please also find a good church community.  Find a good pastor and mature friends with whom you can share these concerns.   It’s okay to set aside time to pray and read Scripture and such.

Ask many, many, many questions, not just about Christianity, but about everything.  We tend to so easily question our faith when we hardly put the same filter on what we learn in the world, and it’s a bias that cripples many college freshmen.  Don’t be impressed when someone comes at you with all kinds of so-called scientific facts or cute little catchphrases.  Ask questions and find the bottom line.

But again: before you do all that, please cast off the guilt. 

Please remember that intimacy with God means we believe He is good, gracious, loving, forgiving, accepting, and all the wisdom we need — even if that belief is a tiny mustard seed today amidst all our swirling circumstances. 

We can approach Him as a Brother, Friend, Father, King, and Counselor.  You can tell Him everything, including, “I don’t even feel You right now.”  He will not bite your head off, but restore you piece by piece.  God can handle our craziness in every season.  He understands that fleshy part of us, and He will work with you to meet you where you are.  By faith, believe. 

— J.S.

Sovereign Seeds, Unknown Deeds

Someone once told me:

“You’re just a little local pastor at a tiny nowhere church — what do YOU know?”

I wish I could tell you I recovered quickly from this one and made all kinds of God-declarations like “He uses the smallest of us in ways we can’t see” and that I remembered I was uniquely handcrafted by God to serve my corner of the universe.

But I didn’t do this. I was devastated.

I believed what the guy said over what God says.

A little local pastor at a tiny nowhere church.  So what do I know?

The guy was right.  The truth is, I really am a nobody pastor at a tiny nowhere church.  I’ve hardly preached to a crowd of over one-hundred.  I have a modest little podcast and this blog with a few followers, and that’s it. I really don’t know much.

Do you know who else feels this way?

Well, pretty much everyone.

It’s easy to feel like you’re the only guy who God has overlooked, that somehow God can’t see you, that He’s not opening doors for you, that He’s not giving you the “big break.”

I’m guessing the megachurch pastor down the street is choked by the same insecurities.  He might have a larger scale — “I haven’t even published a book yet, we only had 800 people last week” — but I can guarantee he’s struggling with the same self-condemning loop in his head.

Your Sunday service could’ve been drowned in musical failures, sermon misfires, and the ordinary small-town drama.  A Bible study didn’t land and the kid’s service was a trainwreck.  You’re not sure if anyone else is growing, including yourself. 

I got to thinking: this is all a pretty ridiculous amount of pressure we put on ourselves.  And for what?  Sure, we’re called to grow our churches and be effective and reach out to the city — but if our motive is to go from a little known Christian to a better known Christian, then it doesn’t matter if we succeed anyway.  An effective church is not everything; a faster donkey is still a jackass.

Really everything that God says about you is true, no matter what’s happening around you.  You truly are a unique handcrafted masterpiece who has been placed by God to be engaged and present where you are. 

If you’re teaching five people at a Bible study, if you have twenty followers on your blog, if your church hasn’t grown past fifty, and if you don’t even have a book published yet — you are still a vehicle for God to flex His power as a force for good in the universe.  God is still in the business of using weak, frail, broken, empty, unknown people for His glorious story on the earth.  If God spoke through a jackass, certainly He can work through you and me.

I can’t tell you how many times I thought I bombed a sermon, messed up a song, or fumbled a Bible study — but God graciously sowed that seed anyway, even days and weeks and years later.  We don’t hear about the other end very often, but when we do, it is nothing short of God’s miraculous power. 

He is sowing.  He is sovereign.  He is doing His wildly wonderful work in you, not by the flip of a switch, but by the journey of a seed pushing through the dirt into the warmth of sunlight.

And if you still feel like no one knows you — God does.

If you feel like you know nothing — God knows you.

If God alone is not enough when you’re not successful, then nothing will be enough even when you do have success.

Serve that tiny place.  Be okay behind the scenes.  We need the unsung heroes.  We need you.

— J.S.

You might have had some convictions from church today. Ask God for continued strength. Don’t forget how He spoke to you. Follow through, not to earn Him, but because He has already begun to work in you.