I’m Blind & I Know It

The following post is a sermon I delivered for our church’s Young Adults ministry. You can listen to the audio version here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/75PbzoRqjg4Yew9KvXtrUS?si=2557b2104af74f2e

In 1895, an Austrian neurologist named Gabriel Anton came across a case he had no categories for. His patient was a 69-year-old dairy maid named Juliane, and she threw poor Dr. Anton for a loop. Juliane had lost her eyesight. Standard stuff so far for a neurologist – eyesight is directly connected to many brain functions so no surprise there. Until Dr. Anton realized – Juliane didn’t believe her condition was real. She still thought she could see. She wasn’t the first of these kinds of cases – a woman as far back as 63 AD has been recorded exhibiting similar symptoms – telling her servants to just rearrange the room (dozens of times) because it was just too dark in there the way it was. The condition became known as Anton’s Syndrome, and it is one of the rarest in the world, with only 28 reported cases. But it’s very real. Can you imagine the feeling? Totally incapable of perceiving the world around you, running into everything you step toward and never reaching a point of realization that you simply just cannot see? Honestly I think that would make a good thriller movie.

It’s true this is rare, but it is reality that human beings can be totally blind while simultaneously believing they can see. I don’t think we could imagine it would be us, could we? To be blind versus able to see is such a blatant contrast, we can’t imagine a world where we went blind and didn’t know it. How could we miss it? How could we ignore it? But it’s possible. I think the rarity of these cases inflates this thought process in our minds. There are only 28 recorded cases in human history. Maybe it’s possible, but not for me!

The problem with that thinking is that every single person in this room is blind already – and some of us know it, but the majority of us don’t.

I start here because the man in tonight’s scripture is very blind. His name is Bartimaeus. And we’ve been studying throughout the book of Mark to see how people who encountered Jesus respond to Him. We can look for ourselves in their actions around Jesus to learn who He is, who we are, and how we should live as a result. I feel an intense need to point out this blindness before we read, because if we’re not careful, we’ll miss the whole point. We’re gonna read Mark 10:46-52, and as we do I want you to pay careful attention to the characters around Jesus. What do they do? What do they say? Where can you see yourself in this story? Take the time to answer those questions honestly. And I’m gonna try to help us see ourselves by going through it step by step. So, let’s read about it, then pray about it, then we’ll talk about it and as we leave this place I pray we would choose to be about it.  46 Then they reached Jericho, and as Jesus and his disciples left town, a large crowd followed him. A blind beggar named Bartimaeus (son of Timaeus) was sitting beside the road. 47 When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus of Nazareth was nearby, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

48 “Be quiet!” many of the people yelled at him. But he only shouted louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 When Jesus heard him, he stopped and said, “Tell him to come here.” So they called the blind man. “Cheer up,” they said. “Come on, he’s calling you!” 50 Bartimaeus threw aside his coat, jumped up, and came to Jesus. 51 “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked. “My Rabbi,[j]” the blind man said, “I want to see!” 52 And Jesus said to him, “Go, for your faith has healed you.” Instantly the man could see, and he followed Jesus down the road.[k] – Mark 10:46-52 NLT

Right out of the gate, we are told that Jesus and His disciples are passing through Jericho. The main thing you need to know about Jericho at this point is that it was a city CHOCK FULL of rich people. King Herod built a winter palace there, and it was built around a spring – it was often called the City of Palms. So, it’s no wonder that immediately after we hear they’re in Jericho that Mark tells us “and they passed a blind beggar guy.” They were everywhere in Jericho. That’s where the money was! Most times, they didn’t have much, so they’d spread their cloaks out on the ground hoping that somebody would feel bad enough to toss a coin or two onto them. It was the only source of income they had.

And that’s where we meet Bartimaeus. Now, understand – every detail included in scripture is important. In Hebrew, Bar-Timaeus means “son of the unclean”. Which is interesting, because God’s law – Genesis through Deuteronomy – declared many ways to become unclean, but blindness was not one of them. Sure, people in ancient Israel pitied the blind; they felt sorry for them, but that wasn’t a reason to be considered “unclean,” or looking/smelling too much like death to go into the presence of the author of life. Not sinful, just unclean. But the Pharisees had written another book to accompany the Scriptures – the Talmud; think like a commentary – that associated blindness with death. And though it wasn’t scripture, they took it as seriously as scripture, in some cases even more seriously than scripture. So, Bartimaeus has the Double Whammy – unclean because of ineffective rules made up by man, and unclean because he was born into it – the son of the unclean. By this point in Mark, we should know good and well what Jesus thinks about unclean people – He loves them. If you wanna know more about that, go listen to our sermons from a few weeks back.

Bartimaeus is just hanging out, doing his own thing, praying that somebody would drop a quarter, when he heard somebody mention that Jesus was there. All it took was an anecdotal mention of Jesus’ presence and Bartimaeus became my son Oli when he’s loopy tired; pretty much just screaming because he can. He shouted and shouted and shouted, “Jesus, son of David! Have mercy on mee!!!!” The people in the massive crowd following Jesus are not about it. We don’t know exactly why they’re mad at him – maybe it’s because Jesus is headed to Jerusalem toward the cross – the people might see this as a royal procession, and NOBODY interrupts one of those. Or maybe they just didn’t like the way he smelled and wanted him to stay put. Either way, they try to shut him up – but I love this – they just made it worse. He shouted even louder, and even more.

And isn’t it interesting what Bartimaeus shouted? “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The Son of David part is pretty cool – that’s Bartimaeus’s extremely Jewish way of saying that He believes Jesus is the Messiah. He’s doing the same thing Peter did in chapter 8, he’s just not using the same words as Peter. But it’s the last part of his shout that sets Bartimaeus apart – he asks Jesus for mercy. Why? What did he do wrong? We already established that his blindness is not a cause of uncleanness. He’s just a poor guy who got dealt a sorry hand of cards, right?

This is where this story really starts to get good. Remember how we said to be blind and not know it would be awful, right? Painful – scary – anxiety-filled; there isn’t really a way to be blind and not know it that isn’t terrible. But what about being blind and knowing it? Wouldn’t that be just as bad, just in a different way? To long for sight, to remember it if you had it at another time, and to know there’s a better way to live and not have it? You could argue that might even be worse. We don’t know how long Bartimaeus has been blind. Clearly a long time. No doubt he desired sight and had probably given up on any possibility of regaining it. We know that he for sure does want that, because he’s gonna ask Jesus for it in verse 51. But it’s not the first thing he asks for. Bartimaeus’s first request, and as far as he knows, maybe the only one he’ll get, is for mercy.

 Bartimaeus’s blindness had driven him to a low point of desperation. That’s why he was sitting outside Jericho with his cloak on the ground. There is no question that Bartimaeus’s blindness scared him, or at the very least was discouraging to him. But however long he was blind, it was enough time for Bartimaeus to realize he had a deeper problem – down in the depths of his soul, well underneath any physical, emotional, or mental struggles he experienced, Bartimaeus was a dramatically flawed and sinful man. There was something about his blindness that drove him to accept his own weakness, his own faults, and his sin. And it was so impactful to him that the second he heard that Jesus was near, he asked for mercy. Maybe that sounds crazy to you. But it’s not unheard of.

I once heard Joni Erickson-Tada speak at a chapel service when I was in college at DBU. Joni was 17 when she dove headfirst into a pool that wasn’t as deep as she’d thought and broke her neck. Ever since, she’s been paralyzed. And she said something in that chapel service that has never left my mind – she said, “Many times, people will come up to me and pray for my disability. I’m grateful for that, and if they want to, I’ll let them. But before they do, I make sure they know, if you wanna pray for me in a way that matters most, pray for my heart. Because if I got up out of this chair and walked away from here today, I would still be bitter, selfish, pointlessly angry, and in my heart of hearts, evil, without the love and refining work of my Savior. So yeah, pray for my legs. That’s fine. But I really need you to pray for my heart.”

Joni and Bartimaeus understand the same thing – your blindness, your paralysis, your weaknesses, will do one of two things. They will either drive you to numb the pain with sin – distract yourself away from the blindness, rearrange the room and deny the problem so you don’t have to think about it, or they will drive you to kneel at the feet of Jesus in humble surrender, ready to trust that whatever He has planned for you is the best thing you could get. That’s why Bartimaeus asks for mercy. But the story doesn’t stop there.

Jesus hears the ruckus he was causing, so He stops still in His tracks. He calls Bartimaeus to come to him. Isn’t that weird? The seeing Guy stands still and tells the blind guy to find his way over to Him? Isn’t that mean? Rude? Maybe. But remember – Jesus came through first. He wasn’t far. And the crowd makes the point to tell Bartimaeus, “He’s calling you,”. Bartimaeus doesn’t have to grope around in his own darkness while Jesus and the others stand there laughing at him. Jesus is in one spot, calling out to Bartimaeus so he can hear His voice. And for Bartimaeus, the thought that the Son of David – the promised Son of God – cares enough about me to stop where He is and invite me over to Him? That’s wild; and it’s enough to convince Bartimaeus to throw that cloak away – his only source of income – and run to Jesus at a full sprint. Who cares what could be in the way? Jesus is calling. He won’t lead me to ruin.

I think most of us want to think we would be this guy. But I don’t think we would. I know I instinctively would not. I love my cloak too much. I don’t want to toss my cloak away. Okay, let me explain. Remember how we began tonight with a claim – we are, all of us, blind, but only some of us know it. Remember that? That includes me. We are blind to our own weaknesses, our sins, and our shortcomings. But that’s not all we’re missing. We are also blind to the goodness and power of God. Not all for the same reasons, but definitely with the same results.

Some of you are blind because you want to be. Somebody told you a long time ago that Jesus loves you and cares about you, and that you should be around His people in the church. But then those people hurt you. Bad. So why would you go all in with the church again? You’re just gonna get hurt. Or maybe it wasn’t even church people – it was just plain old regular people. Abuse and injury don’t have to happen within the church to be impactful enough to blind us from God and what He wants for us.

Or maybe you’re blind in the total opposite way – you are working so hard for Jesus you can’t even see where He actually is and what He’s doing. You’re like Martha – cleaning the house and annoyed that your sister isn’t helping because isn’t the God of heaven worthy of a clean house to relax in?

Or maybe you’re blind because you’re grading good and bad based on other people. Sure, you’ve made mistakes, who hasn’t? But hey – at least you’re not Hitler. Could be worse.

Others are blind because we are so attached to material and physical things, we don’t have space left to see what God is doing – where He is and what He wants. You might even be asking God to move and to show Himself, all the while you won’t put down the thing He told you to give up. And you wonder why you can’t see Him.

When we start to recognize that blindness and become afraid of what it could mean, we distract ourselves. We start using things that were never meant to give us life and approval and blessing to try and squeeze life out of them, and it might work for a little bit. But in the end, it’s really just scraps. Bartimaeus used his cloak – made to protect him from the weather – to gather money instead. That’s not what it was made for. And yet that’s what he’s doing. When you are blind and needy and try to rely on yourself, or anyone else but Jesus, to fix it, you end up using things the wrong way. And that includes your relationship with God.

See, the story directly before Bartimaeus, in Mark 10:35-45 is about James and John – 2 of the 12 disciples – in fact, 2 of the 3 in Jesus’ inner circle (Peter was the third). They come to Jesus asking for special seats of honor in His kingdom – at His left and right hands. They are literally using their relationship with Him to serve themselves. Why else would you walk up to the God of the universe and make your first request a throne? It’s because they’re blind. They are completely missing the point of their place alongside Jesus among the 12. And Jesus lets them know. Like Bartimaeus, they make a request of Jesus. But they don’t get it. Jesus tells them there’s 2 problems with their question: #1, if they want the seat of honor they’re asking for, it’s gonna take a level of humility and selflessness that they don’t even have the ability to comprehend. Paul points out in Philippians 2:6-11 that Jesus’ selfless suffering on the cross is the thing that God used to put Him at the right hand of His throne in heaven and reveal to everyone on earth and through history that Jesus is the King of the World. In other words, James & John don’t get that throne without selfless suffering that they’re not capable of without Jesus’ sacrifice.

But that’s not all. The other problem with their request is that Jesus isn’t the one who makes that call – the Father is. So not only are they asking Jesus for something they’ll never receive like that, but He isn’t even the right guy to ask. They are using their relationship with God to get to a better spot in life, to feel better, and to win. And you and I are just like them.

We don’t want to admit our faults and weaknesses, so we point out other people’s and gossip about them; look at all their faults, you won’t have time to pay attention to mine! Or we use sex and the promise of it to feel better. And that’s Christians included, sometimes even more. (*STORY – gotta be a good husband, dad, etc.). We chase money, because we are not about to let money be a thing we have to worry about. I don’t have time to go to church and pay attention to Jesus in the mornings – I have to work 60+ hours and make sure finances aren’t an issue.

We don’t want to give up our cloaks, do we? But Bartimaeus did – he did it quickly. How would he survive now? Where would his money come from? How long could he last without his literal safety blanket? Why would he give it all up like that? All he had was Jesus’s voice to follow. So, if Jesus was good and cared for Bartimaeus, there should be no problem. He trusts Jesus with everything he is.

Bob Goff said in his book, Love Does, “You don’t need to know everything when you’re with someone you trust. That’s probably why Jesus’ disciples never said they were on a missions trip. I think they knew love already had a name, and they didn’t need a program or anything else to define it. We don’t either. The kind of adventure Jesus has invited us on doesn’t require an application or prerequisites. It’s just about deciding to take up the offer made by a father who wants us to come.” Bartimaeus didn’t know what was coming. He didn’t even know if Jesus would follow through and be a safe person for Him. All he had was a promise from Jesus and the context of Jesus’ reputation. If Jesus really was Who they said He was, and Who He said He was, then it was worth it. He just had to have faith. The fact that he tossed his cloak was proof that he did.

Now, you and I know enough about Jesus to realize – Jesus wasn’t gonna leave Bartimaeus out to dry. Of course, Jesus would be more than enough provision for Him to leave that cloak behind. But here’s the best part – Jesus heals him, because of that faith, and now, if Bartimaeus ever ends up with a new cloak again, he can use it for what it was made for. And it becomes extra flavor in a life rich with sustenance. Jesus is more than enough for Him. So, a new cloak would just be an extra fun thing to add to the adventure.

When you realize you are blind, and you don’t numb the pain – you let it drive you to kneel at the feet of Jesus, you begin to realize – all these things I gave up to trust Him (sex, money, success, a dating relationship, etc.) in their purest forms, they can be enjoyed in a way you didn’t even have the ability to imagine before. They can be used for their intended purposes. All of them. God is not anti-fun. I hate that teaching. On behalf of the church of America, if anybody ever told you that fun has no place in the church, I want to sincerely apologize. James 1 is clear that every good and perfect gift comes from above, and I thoroughly believe that fun is included among those gifts; pure, wholesome, fun, though. Not fun at the expense of others or the dignity of God. When we see our own blindness, kneel at his feet and like Bartimaeus ask for sight – to see the world just like Jesus does – those extra blessings that we repurposed and forced to be something they’re not, become extra layers of depth, flavor, and adventure that we cannot discover within them apart from Jesus.

Don’t misunderstand me – Jesus may very well be calling you to pain and suffering. That’s not avoidable. In fact, it will come. Jesus said so in John 16. But that’s the whole point of the gospel – life is found in knowing Jesus (John 17:3). The way to eternal life is, like He did, to go through death. But that’s more powerful than a lack of suffering. Being able to walk on the water in the storm is more impressive than never going near it.

CS Lewis said once that, “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing–to reach the mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from–my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing? All the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”

You were made for more than begging on the side of the road. You were created to be a much deeper, interesting, and effective human being than the one who lives for the weekend. Life is about so much more than who you’re going to marry, or if you even will get married. Sex is such a small thing in the grand scheme of the cosmos. Don’t you want to live for something more? Don’t you want to know that your life matters, that there’s more to your days than just making an extra dollar? You will never reach the top of the mountain on your own. It will never satisfy you. You were made to be in relationship with the God of heaven. Without that relationship – apart from Him – you are lost. Directionless. Purposeless. Confused. Dead. Blind. But when you recognize your blindness and lean into trust as you follow Jesus, He’ll lead you to do incredible things.

My favorite Star Wars movie is Rogue One, for lots of reasons. But probably the biggest reason is a character named Chirrut Imwe. Chirrut is not a Jedi, but he kinda feels like one. And his relationship with The Force is one of the coolest in the entire movie franchise. His trademark line is “I am one with The Force, and the Force is with me.” The first time he says that, he adds, “And I fear nothing, for all is as The Force wills it.” My dude Chirrut is a BAD dude. Blind as a bat, but he is the most lethal warrior in the entire movie. He’s constantly walking confidently through warzones with his head held high and avoiding all kinds of danger. Why? Because he knows that the Force is strong enough and wise enough to protect him. So he trusts it.

It’s kinda crazy to me that a fake space character has more trust of his immaterial impersonal God energy than we do of the God of heaven who came down to us in the flesh and died in our place. I pray that we would be able to recognize our blindness, lean into it, and trust that the God we serve is more than able to not only protect us, but to make us warriors in His name.

Alpha Challenge 2.0

Welcome to the Alpha Challenge 2.0!

The next 4 weeks will be life-changing. Just how much will be up to you. You’ll get out of it what you put into it.

This page exists to equip you with all the tools you’ll need to complete the challenge 100%.

Use the recommendations below to CRUSH this challenge and be an Alpha Man! Remember – they’re recommendations – not requirements. Complete the goal, but you don’t have to use these resources.

Click here for the Pregame Zoom

Click here for the Alpha 2.0 Calendar.

Pregame Checklist:

  • Introduce yourself (name, age, where you’re located, what you do)
  • Send before pictures on Sunday before 9:13pm
  • Recruit at least two other guys for your huddle (some huddles have already formed)
  • Hop on the pregame zoom 9:13pm Sunday 11/13
  • Set your goals (use minimums in the Set Your Goals graphic and pick a Bible book, set prayer time, identify who you’re serving (wife/fiancée/GF/other), set a creativity goal, identify the church you’ll attend, etc.

Daily Journal Entry & Check-in

Each day, record your progress by:

  • Goals completed/missed
  • Hardest task
  • Describe your day in 5 words or less
  • Answer: “What should you focus on for tomorrow?”

Check-in each day by 10pm to the large group by sending all of the above minus 5 words or less description.

Groupme Rules:

  1. No gossip, cursing, inappropriate comments, NSFW content, or rudeness. This is a place for encouragement and accountability. Take all that other trash somewhere else.
  2. No spam. If you have something to say to someone, direct message them. Keep the chat clear for important messages, questions, and daily check-ins.
  3. What happens in the challenge chat stays in the challenge chat. A guy may share something vulnerable and sensitive and it’s your job to make sure it doesn’t leave this chat. You share anything you read here with someone you shouldn’t (including your wife), you’re instantly kicked off the challenge and out of the group. This is a safe community and that trash will not be tolerated.
  4. Feel free to send random encouragements or recommendations of content for goals or tips to complete goals, but don’t spam either.
  5. Complete the checklists that Ty sends out (pregame & postgame).
  6. Send in your daily Check-in BEFORE 10pm each day.

Alpha Man Core values

The Creed of the Alpha Man

I am a son of God. I am not defined by my past, my mistakes, or my failures. I am defined by my Father in heaven, and He says I am worth the blood of Jesus to Him. I am a man who knows who he is, and therefore I am free. I will approach this day with confidence that no matter what happens, even if it is the worst that could be, He is carrying me in His love, and that is enough.

I am a man that is satisfied. I have more than I need. I am blessed beyond what I deserve. I am the son of a God that is generous to a degree I will never fully understand, therefore I lack nothing. He is enough.

I am a man that keeps my word and does hard things. I don’t shy away from commitments or conflict. I mean what I say, and I do what I say I’ll do. When my brother asks me to go one mile with him, I will go two.

I am a son of my Father in heaven. I will embrace my Alpha role and lead from the front because He has called me to it and He is good. I will live like all of this is true because it is.

I am surrendered to the way of Jesus.
I am selfless; focused on the good of others.
I am safe to all but evil.
I am satisfied in Christ and Christ alone.
I am sacrificial; giving whatever it takes.
And I am celebratory; of good, of others, and of Jesus.

My mind and my heart begin without the best of intentions, so I rely on Jesus to renew them every single day. Today will be no different.

Renew my mind, Lord.

This day is Yours. I am Yours. All of it is Yours.
So today, I will depend on You.

Masculine Worship

Click here for worship music by men for men.

YouTube Channels

Podcasts

Bible Books

  • Gospel of John
  • Proverbs
  • 1st & 2nd Corinthians
  • Acts
  • Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1st & 2nd Timothy
  • Gospel of Matthew

Books

  • Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
  • The Last Relapse by Sathiya Sam
  • Unwanted by Jay Stringer
  • God Has a Name, Garden City, Live No Lies, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, all by John Mark Comer
  • Knowing God by J.I. Packer
  • Love Does by Bob Goff
  • Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
  • Saving Bravo by Stephen Talty
  • A Praying Life by Paul Miller
  • Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero

Acts of Service

Married guys:

  • Buy your wife coffee
  • Buy flowers for your wife for no reason the next time you go to the grocery store just for one thing
  • Do the kids’ morning/bedtime routine so she can have a bit of time to herself
  • Rub her feet at the end of the day
  • Do a load of laundry instead of lounging and watching SportsCenter (which you can actually do WHILE you do laundry so on this one y’all both win)
  • Take your wife on a date this weekend and make sure she never has to touch a door handle other than the bathroom door
  • Spend a day looking for 15 different ways to tell your wife she looks beautiful. Do not repeat the same compliment. Don’t stop ’til you hit 15.

Dating/Engaged guys:

  • Surprise your girl at work with flowers just because.
  • Send her texts throughout the day telling her you’re thinking about her or that she’s beautiful – more than usual.
  • Go to the store with her when she gets groceries and carry in her groceries at her house so she doesn’t have to.
  • Take your girl on a date this weekend and make sure she never has to touch a door handle other than the bathroom door.
  • Call her on the phone (not FaceTime) and ask her about her day. Take notes on the other end and use what you learn to get her a gift the next day (counts as 2 days)
  • Take her dog on a walk and get it out of the house so she can work on homework, clean the house, or just take a bath – give her time to herself.

Single guys:

  • Do a load of laundry for your mom.
  • Mow the lawn for your dad.
  • Do the dishes for your roommates; their dishes. Yours are a requirement for daily life.
  • Stay late after practice and clean the gym/field for your coach.
  • Make dinner for your family.
  • Volunteer yourself to run the scoreboard for your coaches at lower level games.
  • Ask your dad what he’s wanting to get done around the house that you can take off his plate.

Huddles

What to do at your weekly huddle:

1. Complete goals together (push-ups etc.)
2. Read a Bible chapter together
3. Identity strong and weak points for previous week to build on and improve for next

Alpha Huddle

  • Ty Hirsch
  • Kobi Dobbins
  • Emerson Roberson
  • Ashton Smith
  • Jake Valdez
  • Michael Moos

Bravo Huddle

  • Levi Haas
  • JT Hill
  • Chase Milner
  • Fuston Powell
  • Cash Morales
  • Sam Linguist

Charlie Huddle

  • Ben Patton
  • Caleb Cresalious
  • Preston Hornick
  • Colby Wolf

Delta Huddle

  • Zach Prewitt
  • Brandin Webb

Foxtrot Huddle

  • Chancey Hall
  • Jaden Anderson
  • Ryan Matthews

Kilo Huddle

  • Dillon Smith
  • Joshua Stanford

Sierra Huddle

  • Kevin Escamilla
  • Ryan Bradley
  • Corbin Hill
  • Dimontray Sibley

Tango Huddle

  • Garrett Greene
  • Jackson Webb

Romeo Huddle

  • Stone Stegall
  • Andrew Borseth
  • Chaz Mayhew
  • Tanner Hook

Echo Huddle

  • Seth Williams
  • Parker Parris
  • Corbin Tidwell

Whiskey Huddle

  • Ranjan Ghate
  • Kyle Sutton
  • Alec Williams

X-Ray Huddle (virtual)

  • Dusty Baker
  • Will Allen
  • Joe Trapnell

Yankee Huddle

  • Curtis Plank
  • Austin Plank

Zulu Huddle

  • Gavin Cunningham
  • Josiah Gariboldi
  • Richard Hyde

Real Friends Know They’re Poor in Spirit

Did your school do Red Ribbon Week? It was HUGE in my schools. All the way from Kindergarten to senior year, there were dress-up days, assemblies, fun competitions during the lunch hour, and so much more. In high school, one of our teachers held a Drunk Goggle Mario Kart tournament. We would wear these goggles that looked like safety goggles but they warped your vision to something similar to what it would look like with a BAC anywhere between 0.8. and 1. 5. (Jury’s still out on whether or not that was appropriate, but it was dang sure fun! And it was hilarious to watch my classmates get super frustrated every time they smacked into the wall in the Coconut Mall or fell into the oblivion of space on Rainbow Road).

The whole point was that when our vision was altered, focusing on the track was basically impossible. We weren’t looking at the screen appropriately, so chaos ensued.

Jesus is very conscious of this paradigm. Most of us just want to be like our friends, to go the way they’re going and be like them because not being accepted is one of our greatest fears. We abhor the thought of what it would mean to be an outcast, so we compromise to get what we want. And people get hurt. A lot.

The whole world is full of this. Everybody wants to be like everybody else, but nobody knows how to quit all the pain and hurt. And though Jesus does have a solution, most of us aren’t going to like it very much.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.”

Matthew 7:13-14 CSB

As a high schooler, I didn’t have very many friends. At the time, I thought it was because I took the high road most often and everybody else just settled for cheap fun at parties out in random corn fields getting drunk and doing stupid stuff because there was, in their minds, nothing else to do. In reality, I was a self-centered, stuck up Pharisee who literally thought I was a better person simply because I didn’t get drunk along with them.

Matt Chandler said once, “If you say the right thing the wrong way, you’re still wrong.” That was me. See, I thought I was taking Jesus’s narrow road by staying away from the parties and letting everybody know how wrong they were for going. But the truth is all of us were wrong. We all thought we knew what was best, and we decided in our own hearts that our way of doing things was the right one; that the things we said were most valuable really were the most valuable and important things, and everybody else had better go along with us or they’re wrong. But that’s not what Jesus is saying. He’s saying that there’s only one way to find life, to find growth, to find good, and it’s Him.

My dad owns a lawn care company, and in middle school and high school, I worked for him in the summers. Whenever we had a large, open field to mow, he trained me to find something at the end of the field, dead ahead of where I was supposed to mow, and look at it the entire time I made a pass down the field. If I didn’t look away, my line that I had just cut would be straight, and would look beautiful. If I didn’t focus, the lines would be so off-kilter that the mistake would be visible for weeks.

When we have a target to focus on, the results lead to good things, life, and blessing. The problem for us is sin. It literally means missing the mark. To be a sinner literally means “to be one who missed the target.”

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,”

Titus 2:11-12 ESV

Jesus is that grace of God that appeared and brought salvation for all people. He died in your place because of your self-centeredness and is offering you the gift of a relationship with Him-direct access to the God of the universe. And in Titus’s words, the only way there is to realize we’re living our lives enslaved to anything but God, without self-control, and beaten down. We’re poor in Spirit. If we don’t get that we miss everything.

Jesus’s target is simple, and it’s been saturated throughout the Sermon on the Mount: trust God over yourself and you will find life. Anything else will destroy you. According to Jesus, lots of people miss this line. You and your friends are on one of these two paths: you either trust that Jesus is wiser than you and y’all follow His lead, or you don’t. That’s it. Every decision that you and your friends make about what you will do, what you will say, how you will treat others, and so much more, is filtered through this dichotomy. How are you doing? How are your friends doing?

Take a look through these two lists of fruits, or results, and ask yourself: which of these do I see in my life and the lives of the people around me? What’s most common?

FAKE FRIENDS:

“Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things—as I warned you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Galatians 5:19-21 CSB

REAL FRIENDS:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”

Galatians 5:22-26 CSB

So what is it? Where do you and your friends fall? Are you really being authentic, genuine friends to each other, or are you using each other? Are you being a real friend or a fake friend? When you look at the people around you, it shouldn’t be too hard to see.

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

Matthew 5:3 CSB

People who think they’re rich in spirit are only looking at themselves. Sure, they may look around at the people near them every once in a while, but then it’s right back to them. When you’re looking at yourself, it’s easy to think you’re rich in spirit because you are small. Ever heard the phrase, “You’re missing the forest for the trees”? A mature oak tree can produce 10,000 acorns and has an average of 200,000 leaves every year. That’s a lot to look at and to focus on if you only look at the one tree. But a forest is much more interesting than 10,000 acorns. There are beautiful birds, peaceful deer to watch (or eat if you’re into it), silly raccoons and squirrels to laugh at, awesome views in clearings and along trails to take in, and sometimes there’s cozy cabins to hunker down in or maybe even towering waterfalls to swim under. But you miss all of that when you’re focused on the oak tree. When you look up, you realize that this tree is just a small part of something much bigger and more beautiful than itself. Fake friends don’t get this. Fake friends focus on themselves so Fake Friends think they’re rich in spirit.

People who know they’re poor in spirit aren’t looking at themselves; they’re looking at Jesus. They realize there’s a lot more going on in the world than just them and they want to be a part of it. So they wake up every morning with a desire to quit looking at themselves and start looking at Jesus. They do what it takes to remove the distractions that are always trying to pull them onto the wide path. And the best part? They find life every time they get their eyes off themselves and look to Jesus.

Look at the fruit of your life. Galatians makes it clear. When you’re focused on Jesus, you’ll see a lot more love. When you’re looking at the Father instead of yourself, joy rules the day, even in hard times. With the Holy Spirit as your target for your attention, you will find yourself peaceful even in the craziest, most terrifying moments. Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; all of it will be evident more and more every day. When you’re looking at yourself, you’ll see hatred sabotaging your friendships. When you’re self-centered with your attention, your anger will explode and hurt you and your friends. Looking at you and only you will bring in all kinds of selfish ambitions, dissensions, envy, promiscuity, and so much more (not to mention sexual immorality, drunkenness, and all the like). Look at your friends and ask yourself if you genuinely want what they have.

If it’s not Jesus, it’s only going to destroy you. You need to be willing to trust Him on that or you will be seriously hurt by sin one day.

He loves you so much He didn’t want to leave you stuck without a way to focus on Him and be with Him. So TRUST Him! Realize you’re poor in Spirit and let Him fill that emptiness with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, & self-control.

Real Friends Do What You Need

If you think humans are naturally good people who just need kindness and smiles to be okay, you’ve clearly never watched Super Nanny.

My wife and I are expecting our first baby in October, so, naturally, we’ve been looking to Super Nanny Jo Frost for all our discipline training. Kidding! (kinda)

Regardless, we’ve watched a lot of the show, and there’s a constant theme running through basically every episode: nearly every parent whose home has descended into kid-induced chaos shares this behavior: they all want to be their kids friends more than they want to be their parent. They never say no, they spend thousands on their kids more than they should just because the kid wants more stuff, and they give them food with the same nutritional value as whatever you’d find on a random trip to the local landfill. And they do all this because they don’t want to have to hear their kid scream. “I’ll give you whatever you want! Just stop crying!”

They do a pretty good job of following the American version of the Golden Rule:

“Don’t do anything to others that you wouldn’t want them to do to you.”

The Golden Rule

That’s how most of us have learned it, right? According to the way we teach our kids, this is as high as it gets – nothing is more important. The “gold standard” is that we should keep away from doing anything we wouldn’t want others to do to us. Or, put the other way – we should only do to others what we would want them to do to us. If everybody just acted kind, we wouldn’t have any problems.

This rule seems pretty simple, right? Pretty easy? Well, it’s exactly what all the parents on Super Nanny are doing. I wonder what they’d say if we asked them how easy it is to follow this rule.

It’s not. That’s what they’d say. They’re drowning – all they ever do is give their kids what they want but the problem is none of the kids have the ability to know and value this fact: sometimes what we want has to take second place to what we need.

The problem with seeing the Golden Rule the way we do has a few sides to it, so the rest of this article is going to tackle each one and offer what I think, and most importantly what God thinks, is a better alternative.

Side #1: Wants Trump Needs

Let’s face it: when it comes to choosing between what we want and what we need, we let our wants trump our needs more often than not. We’re really good at pushing off responsibilities and indulging our desires. We’re really bad at getting the work done and relaxing afterward. Work is not easy. And we don’t like not easy. So even though we may need to get up and out of bed and get our day started so we’re not late to work, we want to sleep another 15 minutes. So we do. And the cycle repeats itself all day long. Before we know it, that pile of dirty dishes has been sitting in the sink for 10 days.

This makes our version of the golden rule exceptionally difficult. It’s what we see playing out on Super Nanny; if the only thing our friends ever do to or for us is what we want, our jacked-up wants will ruin everything. If I want my friend to let me drive his 1969 Mustang at 100mph in heavy traffic, and he lets me, he shouldn’t be surprised when I total it 2 minutes into the drive. If I want to be able to make fun of my “friends” for their mistakes, I shouldn’t be shocked when they eventually boil over and snap back at me, or when their ability to make and maintain friendships is broken in the future. I may want it, but I don’t always accurately estimate the cost.

Other times, I desperately need things I would never want. Surgery for a broken bone is excruciatingly painful, which is why they have to knock you out to do it. But if I was so scared of the IV needle that I refused the surgery, I’d have to live with a broken arm and the issues it caused as it healed without the surgery for the rest of my life.

We may like to let our wants trump our needs but if we live like this and only ever give people what they want, what we actually end up doing is hurting each other unnecessarily.

Side #2: Jesus Never Said It That Way

Most people attribute the original Golden Rule quote to Jesus. But there are others who said versions of it literally hundreds and thousands of years before Him; Rabbis like Hillel, Greek philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle – even Confucius had his own iteration of it. Multiple humans have believed the idea that we ought to treat each other the way we want to be treated. And while Jesus may not have been the first publicly-recorded teacher to teach this idea, His version escalates the issue to a stellar level that all the rest don’t even come close to.

The version of the Golden Rule from an ancient teacher that comes closest to Jesus’s version is from Aristotle. A student once asked him how we should treat our friends. Aristotle replied: “As we would that they should act to us.” According to Aristotle, this kind of behavior only applies to our friends.

But look at what Jesus actually said:

“7 Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Who among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him. 12 Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 7:7-12 CSB

The verse that actually contains the Golden Rule is book-ended by God Himself. Verse 12 starts with a “therefore,” and every time you read “therefore” in the scriptures, you need to back up and find out what it was put there for. In this case, it makes verse 12 a stamp of practical action on verses 7-11: your God is good and you should seek what’s on His heart.

The end of verse 12 makes the Golden Rule a kind of headline for the Old Testament: treating others with the behavior you would want is the banner over all of God’s instruction for the world prior to Jesus.

These two ideas are inseparable from each other. To leave either on their own creates even more problems.

If all you do is seek what’s on God’s heart without putting any of it into practice, you become a Pharisee; AKA you care a lot about God’s word but very little about the people He died to save. If all you do is treat others how you want without seeking what’s on God’s heart, pain and chaos will ensue (as we just observed with Super Nanny above).

Jesus’s Better Alternative

When we seek what’s on God’s heart, what we end up wanting for ourselves is what He wants for us. This becomes our basis for how to treat others. And unlike Aristotle’s teaching, it’s the basis for how we treat all others, not just the ones we like or who we consider friends.

“1 So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Colossians 3:1-3 CSB

It’s not easy to seek what God wants. Centering your life around the idea that you’ve already died and your life isn’t your own is crazy difficult. It almost sounds morbid. But it’s essential. It’s what we need. Any “friends” who don’t get this will only end up using us for their own desires. Any time we call ourselves a “friend” but we don’t get this, we’ll just end up using them, too.

Fake friends are the kind who let you have whatever you want. They are afraid of the pain of confrontation, so they flatter us and avoid difficult conversations, letting us do what we want and be what we want and ignore what we actually are. And most likely, when times get hard and we need them to stand by us, they ghost us and are nowhere to be found.

Real friends are literally the opposite. They know who we are: very good creations of God Almighty, who have been poisoned by sin, in every part of our lives, making us not good at all. They know we’ve been bought with a price; by the blood of Jesus. And they know that every second we spend living like that’s not true only further injures and imprisons our souls. They see us dousing ourselves in gasoline and lighting ourselves on fire in stupidity and they offer to be the water hose we need to put out the blaze. The question becomes which we will love more: life with the fire or without it. The help from the friend with the water is only beneficial if the fire dies, and often we don’t want it to. We’d rather keep it alive.

So what are your friends giving you? Water or gasoline? You will be the average of the five people you pay the most attention to. So check your own life – do an inspection. Are there destructive fires raging all around you? Do your friends fuel them bigger and brighter and more detrimental or do they help you put them out? Do you even want that fire to go out?

The fire of God is good – a passion for His name and His glory and a relationship with Him is good. A fire without Him, however, is terribly bad. Are you willing to put the fire out, to kill it and receive the life-giving relief of the Living Water of God? You have to decide, and whatever you decide, be consistent. Follow through and let your friends have the hard conversations that you need. As you seek what’s on God’s heart, you’ll find that you’re beginning to want those conversations more and more.

Real Friends Pray; Fake Friends Promote

You ever see that guy on the street corner downtown that prays at the top of his lungs with a megaphone? Like even the megaphone gets worn out. “GOD IN HEAVEN, WOULD YOU SPARE YOUR WRATH ON THOSE HEATHEN THAT ARE WALKING INTO THAT BAR OVER THERE WITH THE TANK TOPS AND SHORT SHORTS!? DO NOT INCUR YOUR WRATH ON THEM THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO!!!!” He’s kinda scary to me, honestly.

Or what about this guy: “Father, we just love You so much, Jesus and God we pray that as we come into Your presence, Lord, that you multiply Your heavenly blessings to us, Lord, and that we seek, Oh God, that we seek Your will tonight, Father God Lord, and Jesus Your power from heaven is matchless, and powerful, and majestic, and so good, and Lord Jesus would you…” CRINGE. What if I talked to my bros that way? “Yeah dude, idk bro I just think it’s not the right day man, bro, you know dude? Yeah, bro, it’s so crazy my guy, I can’t believe it man.” Gag.

I’ve got more: ever had a friend who said “Oh goodness, yeah, I’ll definitely pray for you!” Or maybe you said that to someone, but you both know it’s not actually going to happen. Y’all going straight home and that prayer is 100% not going up because you’re gonna forget. Or maybe you don’t actually care; you just told them you’d pray because saying “No, sorry, I won’t,” is rude and awkward.

Or maybe you got asked to pray in small group, and you nearly laid an egg; Me? Oh no, I can’t pray in front of these people. *gulp* “Sure,” and then you pray, only to leave the group embarrassed out of your mind.

Regardless where you stand with your experiences over prayer, we’ve got some funny ways to do it. Or not do it.

Every single one of these descriptions of prayer only exists because the pray-er is worried about other people. Think about it – hellfire and brimstone boy isn’t screaming for the tank-top short-shorts girls’ sakes; he wants everybody else to turn and watch. Father-God-Lord-Jesus-Savior-King Man is exhibiting a textbook definition “nervous filler-word” dynamic; he’s worried about what the people listening think so he adds a bunch of words to sound super spiritual. Dropping a promise to pray for someone else stems from making a commitment that you don’t know if you can keep, or that sometimes is a straight-up lie so the other person doesn’t hate you for being a jerk. Anxiety about being bad at prayer is a direct result of worrying about “doing it right” or impressing the other people in the group. If that’s how we’re praying, then who are we actually praying to? Sure as heck doesn’t sound like we’re focused on God very much, if at all.

See, the thing is, that’s exactly what’s going on: when most Christians in 2021’s version of Western Christianity pray, they’re not focused on God; no, they’re aiming at impressing the people who listen.

My friends, this is a dangerous way to pray. And Jesus knows it:

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Matthew 6:5-8 ESV

Jesus says that whoever is praying like this (and he basically describes the first 2 people I mentioned almost verbatim) already has what they’re looking for, and is steeped in deception. The “hypocrites” and the “Gentiles” are the people who pray start to finish with the goal of getting others’ to pay attention to them. In other words, they think their prayer is an opportunity for promotion. Ever met anybody like that? Heck – ever been that person?

These are the people who don’t actually listen to you to hear about you, they only ever care to talk about themselves. They need other people to like them so bad that they feel a compulsion to do and say things that force you to acknowledge them and what they’re doing. Or, out of the same root feelings, they do and say everything they can to get you to focus on something else besides them. This comes in all kinds of packages; from the wild and rambunctious attention-seeker to the anxiety-ridden introvert, every single one of us has been this person. We feel a pressure to perform, and unfortunately, our God-given, abundantly gracious method of communication with the Creator of the Universe gets caught in this crossfire.

But it’s normal for us to be this kind of person now. Romantic couples literally have brands for merch and social media marketing. Individuals, too. There’s a ton of people on social media now who are famous just because they’re famous, and the rest of us feel like we have to be like them, too. We are constantly promoting ourselves. We look around and try to make sense of the world around us based on what we see the people in our circles doing. We think, “Well, all of my best friends have a side-hustle and a personal brand and they’re launching their YouTube channel or podcast or clothing line and their Instagram stories look like so much fun; that’s what I need to be doing. When I get there, I’ll be doing well for myself.”

So we start using other people and things that were never meant for this to get there.

Including God. Including prayer.

Jesus isn’t having it, people. Quit acting like He’s okay with this type of Christianity. Quit playing games.

Don’t believe me? Let’s break down they way Jesus says we should pray:

“Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

Matthew 6:9 ESV

Step 1: “Our”. Jesus assumes that we are praying together. If you get nothing else from this post, get this:

Fake friends promote, but real friends pray. But how do they pray? Clearly not the way we described earlier.

Step 2: “Hallowed be your name.” Hallowed means holy, which means separate or different. Translation? Recognize that God, your Father, is different and that’s good. Acknowledge it. Get your heart in line with it. Nothing else makes sense without it.

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Matthew 6:10 ESV

Step 3: “Your kingdom…Your will.” Drag your need to promote yourself out into the light and slaughter it. Your heart needs what His heart wants. Get that, and you get life, basically. So step #3 is to line up with what God wants for you (I promise it’s better than your wildest imagination).

“Give us this day our daily bread,”

Matthew 6:11 ESV

Step 4: “Give us.” You have and know what we need, God; so we trust you’ll give it to us. Again, He knows better and we get our hearts in line with it.

“and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Matthew 6:12 ESV

Step 5: “Forgive us.” You can’t truly ask for forgiveness without humility; check your pride at the door and own where you’ve messed up with others. I hope you’re noticing a trend here, because Jesus is definitely using one.

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Matthew 6:13 ESV

Step 6: “Lead us.” When’s the last time anybody in 2021 willingly asked somebody else to lead them?

Jesus is trying to over and over again, in every conceivable area of life, hammer this point home:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”

Matthew 5:3 ESV

People who know they’re poor in spirit (AKA they need God, and can’t do life on their own) have no need to promote. They can pray for you, they can pray with you, and in doing so they can make sure your heart and theirs are lined up right next to what God wants for you; to prosper you and protect you, to give you a hope and a future, and to be treated by Him and by others like the image of God that you were made to be.

We gotta stop using our relationship with Jesus to impress other people; it’s making so many of us not want to go to church, and it’s causing us to do really stupid things in the name of God, all because we’re so afraid that somebody out there might not like us. Be honest. Be real. That starts with admitting your own inability to do life and it grows from there to the way you love the people around you.

Stop praying to promote yourself. Get in your prayer closet, plead for God to turn your heart to His, then get out there and live like it’s true with everybody else.

You’ll surprise yourself what kind of person you can be, and what kind of life you can live when this is true of you.

Real Friends Admit Their Faults

Have you ever failed to check yourself, and ended up wrecking yourself? I have. A lot.

Take, for example, the time I ruined our family vacation to the Grand Canyon. Standing on the south rim, soaking in the view and looking for a good spot to take a picture, I decided to drag up some past emotional baggage I had with my dad right there in front of God and everybody in my family. Tears were shed. Voices were raised. Car doors were slammed. Prairie dogs were frightened.

Now, don’t get me wrong; this conversation wasn’t just out of the blue. Some things had happened that day that reminded me of those emotions, and like the steely, self-controlled grown man that I was, I naturally just couldn’t help myself and overflowed with some nasty words. But if I had been a little more self-aware, a little less self-righteous, and a lot more considerate of the rest of my family, I don’t think I would’ve so quickly forgotten (or ignored?) my own failures, both that day and in the days of the past.

I’ve been writing a series here on friends; what is the best kind of friend to have? How can I be the best friend I can be? Jesus gave us a pretty good discourse on those questions called the Sermon on the Mount, and in today’s portion, He addresses checking yourself before you not just wreck yourself, but before you wreck others.

“Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged. For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use.”

Matthew 7:1-2 CSB

Jesus gets right to His point: the instant you start judging other people for their faults, you fling the door open for them to start judging you. Are you sure you can handle that? You do know that when you criticize them for what they said, they’re just going to turn around and dig into your life to find the last time you said the same thing? “You will be judged by the same standard with which judge others.“

This is why the Bible is so amazing – Jesus said these words over 2,000 years ago and they’re still insanely relevant today. Y’all, this happens to me always. I don’t think a week goes by where I don’t instinctively judge in my mind that I’m better than somebody else because of what they’re doing or saying. Now let me be clear: I hate that I am instinctively this way; it is not my goal and I do not value it highly in the slightest. But it is often my gut reaction, regardless whether I like it or not.

Jesus says I better be careful judging people like that; as soon as I do, I allow them to turn it around on me. So if I’m going to make a comment about somebody else’s faults, I DEFINITELY better have my own issues in that arena handled. But that’s what makes this such a complicated thing; there isn’t a person on earth who has all their problems under control. Our faults sabotage us all.

Jesus didn’t just want to make His points and move on. No, He always made sure that everyone who was listening would have no excuse for not understanding Him. So He gives an example to ensure He is as clear as possible:

“Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a beam of wood in your own eye?”

Matthew 7:3-4 CSB

Can you imagine somebody with a beam in their eye? How ridiculous would that be? A 10-foot long 2×4 just sitting there in your eye socket, bumping into everything and everyone, not to mention the damage it’s probably doing to your own eye. Crazy. But that’s exactly what Jesus is trying to say: your sin is obvious. You’re not fooling anybody when you act like you’ve never done anything wrong, or that you’re not currently doing something wrong. Your sin is just as bad as the next person’s. And most importantly, the only way to live a life that even hints that it’s not true is to straight up ignore that plank sticking out of your face. You can’t avoid your own faults and then turn around and try to fix everybody else’s. You need to acknowledge this. I need to acknowledge this. Otherwise, we’re all walking around with 2×4’s in our eyes destroying everything.

Think about it – you’ve probably been in this situation already, and I’m sure you’ve hated it. Let me help you see it better with a story.

As the oldest of 4 siblings, my behavior was constantly under scrutiny; from my parents as well all three of my younger sisters. When we were younger, one of my sisters and I shared a room at the end of a t-shaped hallway that you would enter at the center. From that entrance, which was probably not even 10 feet from the bedroom door, you could look across the dining room and into the living room to see the TV. So naturally, as a 6-year-old who definitely didn’t want to go to bed, it was super tempting for me to sneak down the hall and poke my head around the door frame of the hallway to see the TV. I watched a lot of Whose Line is it Anyway from that doorway. But without fail, nearly every single time I would sneak to the hall, my sister would eventually realize what I’d done, and sitting in her bed, with a sinister grin on her face, she would call out in a sing-song voice, “Bubby’s out of be-ed!” and I would sprint back to my bed to avoid getting in trouble. And I was fuming. Why? Because I knew that five minutes later, she would do the same exact thing. So naturally I’d call out the exact same accusation: “Sissy’s out of be-ed!” And around and around we we would go.

We hate when people call us out because who are they to tell us why we’re wrong? Did they just forget how bad they messed up yesterday? Who says they get to be the ones who criticize our behavior? This is Jesus’s point exactly. You can’t believe you’re actually somebody’s friend if all you ever do is avoid your own faults. Real friends don’t avoid their faults; fake friends do.

This is a massive reason why so many people get away with terrible behavior. Everybody is avoiding their faults, so whenever a friend of ours does something wrong, one of two things will happen: either we call them out and they turn it right back on us (which always results in more hurt, never in more help), or we say nothing at all because we know we have our own faults but we don’t do anything about them, and the abuse of human dignity continues.

So, what-are we stuck in this forever? Do we have any other options besides endless pain and division? Well, yes we do, but you’re probably not going to like it very much.

“Hypocrite! First take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye.”

Matthew 7:5 CSB

Now look, I need to make sure we understand what Jesus is not saying here: He is not saying that we never call out our friends. Do you see that? Often, our friends do genuinely wrong things and need to be brought to reckon with it because they sure as heck aren’t going to do it on their own. Jesus knows this, but He also knows that our own failures in the areas we call others out on need to be addressed first, otherwise they’ll sabotage us before any good is ever done and everybody only ends up hurt. So He says to take care of your own problem, and then go for your friend’s. The order of events is the issue here. Avoiding our faults and jumping on others’ creates an attitude in our hearts that is destructive, and the only kind of destruction Jesus stands for is the destruction of sin and of destructive behavior like this.

Here’s why I don’t think you are going to like this very much: removing the plank from your own eye is a process that nobody envies going through, even though we all want the results it will bring. Here’s what I mean:

When I was 21, I fell off a 50-foot cliff in the Ozarks. Not a joke. It was awful; a concussion, 30 stitches in my forehead, broken elbow, shattered foot (the doctor said it literally looked like someone had crushed the top of my foot with a sledgehammer), and cuts, scrapes, and bruises all over my body. Legitimately the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life. When I fell, I was wearing Chacos (outdoors sandals), and the rock I hit cut a gash in my left heel so deep it needed staples instead of stitches. When I finally made it to the emergency room (nearly 4 hours after I fell), that gash was going to bleed so bad I’d have lifelong damage unless they did something fast. So they stapled it, with zero anesthetic and zero warning to me.

And I felt every single part of it.

To this day, I believe that 10 seconds of stapling was the most painful part of the entire experience, surgery and therapy included. But without it, my heel wouldn’t have just hurt me – it would’ve been detrimental. I don’t want to relive that for a second. But my body was broken, and it was in desperate need of repair. But the repair that it needed was unavoidably painful.

Our hearts (the center of your thoughts, actions, and emotions) are even worse off than my body was when I fell. Look what the Bible says about us:

“The heart is more deceitful than anything else,
and incurable—who can understand it?”

Jeremiah 17:9 CSB

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There’s no God.’
They are corrupt, and they do vile deeds.
There is no one who does good.
God looks down from heaven on the human race[a]
to see if there is one who is wise,
one who seeks God.
All have turned away;
all alike have become corrupt.
There is no one who does good,
not even one.”

Psalm 53:1-3 CSB

Ever had open-heart surgery? They literally have to break your rib cage open just to get to your heart in the first place, let alone all the stuff they have to cut and stitch and break and re-set to do the actual surgery. They have to put you under because it’s literally so painful that the shock alone could kill you before any bones broke all the way. When something is deeply connected to another thing and it shouldn’t be, removing it is not an easy or enjoyable process. It straight up hurts. Our sin is corrupting our hearts, but none of us want to walk through that pain, so we avoid it by ignoring our sin. But the very definition of sin is moral failure; an inability to hit the mark set for decent and right human behavior.

And we wonder why so many people are using others to feel better about themselves.

The only way to get the plank out of your eye is to quit avoiding it, admit that it’s there, and let the surgeon work. That’s it. There is no other way. You can’t be the friend God made you to be until you admit that you can’t do life alone. You need God because you are poor in spirit.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.”

Matthew 5:3 CSB

People who know that they’re poor in spirit check themselves first. They draw the circle around themselves and let God fix those things before they go around and start trying to fix everybody else. They’re real friends because the fact that they know their own faults and admit them makes them humble enough to ask others to help them fix their faults instead of avoiding them until somebody else has to point it out to them.

Fake friends avoid their faults, but real friends admit them. Do you want good friends? Be a good friend and realize you’re poor in spirit. It’ll drastically change the way you treat other people. There’s only one person in the history of the human race who did nothing wrong and could justifiably criticize others without having to check Himself, and He didn’t. He took that criticism and accusation on Himself and paid for all of it.

Real friends can admit their faults because they know Jesus already died for them.

So what kind of friend are you?

Fake Friends Settle; Real Friends Shine

A conversation about how we determine what’s most valuable.
[5-minute read]

What is the most important thing in your life?

Family? Church? God? Money? Anything else?

How much authority do you give that thing? Like actually. How much does it influence the way you choose to live life?

My guess is, whatever test you’re using to find that answer, Jesus will probably have somewhat different thoughts.

“Do not lay up treasures for yourself on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,”

Matthew 6:19

Jesus opens this section with a warning about our values: be careful where you find the things you call most important, because if you pick anything on Earth, 2 big things make that a problem – 1) it’ll eventually fall apart and/or 2) somebody’s coming after it.

Have you ever found something over 100 years old that has literally zero wear and tear? Yeah, didn’t think so. Nothing lasts forever, not one thing. Your own cells have completely died off and regenerated again and again every 7 years; you’re literally not the same human being physically that you were 7 years ago. If you decide that your house or your car or your fill-in-the-blank thing is the most important thing, don’t be surprised when it eventually falls apart, and your life with it. Even super-expensive jewelry needs upkeep: my wedding ring is white gold. If I don’t take it to the jewelers every six months to get cleaned, it’ll eventually disintegrate so much it’ll literally fall apart, and it’s gold! The overwhelming suffocation to have everyone around you trying so hard to live life a certain way, with a certain image is a feeling I do not like. Yet at the same time, I feel so utterly compelled to go right along with them all and make them think I’m just like them. And while it may feel like these things are the most important thing in our lives at any given moment (believe me, with the housing market in Texas right now, I feel it), Jesus says the investment just isn’t worth it simply on the integrity of the items alone; the things you want will fall apart. But Jesus doesn’t stop there.

I have a friend who went to the Bahamas in the summer between middle school and high school. They had a BLAST; swimming, surfing, even chilling with dolphins at one point. They bought all kinds of souvenirs for their family and friends and flew back to Miami before they made the 2-day trek back to the Midwest. On that trek, they stopped at Olive Garden for dinner, and when they came outside to the pickup truck not 45 minutes later, every single bag they had brought back with them from the Bahamas was gone; stolen, never to be seen again. In the Olive Garden parking lot! Needless to say, they were upset. And they tried as hard as they could to figure out who did it and where they had taken everything, but they never could get it done. Their stuff was gone, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Jesus warns that this is another reason we shouldn’t be valuing things on earth too highly. At any moment, if for no other reason than sin is within their hearts, people can take your stuff and you’ll never see it again. But I think this is deeper than just stuff. Honestly, when’s the last time you felt an overwhelming urge to buy something you shouldn’t, or act some way you shouldn’t, that wasn’t connected to another person?

More often than not, I find myself acting like the people around me and valuing these possessions so highly because I want them to like me. That’s it.

“If they see me in these shoes, they’ll think I’m dirty.”

“If they think I don’t want to go do this thing with them, they’ll think I hate them, which will make them hate me.”

“It really sucks how bad they pick on that classmate/coworker over there. But I mean, he is a little weird and I don’t want to make it look like I don’t like them, too, so I just wont’ say anything.” But If you’ve read the Great Gatsby, you’d know why Nick proves this is wrong, too.

More than anything, we value being approved by people, especially people who look, act, sound, and think like us. And Jesus warns: that kind of treasure doesn’t last, and will be snatched out from under you at any moment. According to Jesus, it just isn’t worth it. The trajectory of your treasure directly determines the health of your heart.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Matthew 6:22-23

Jesus gives us a test. In His words, your eye is the lamp of your body. Lamps in Jesus’s day were essential; without them, homes and other buildings would be drenched in darkness throughout the entire night, and to keep homes cool, windows were not as common as they are now, and they surely weren’t anywhere close to as big. Even during the day, a lamp was a necessary tool to reveal the truth of what was in the home and how to navigate around it all. According to Jesus, whatever goes through your eyes will directly influence the definition of truth and how to navigate it to the rest of yourself. That’s a big deal.

Let’s do a quick comparison: which one do you spend more time thinking about – what others’ opinions are about you or what those people need most right now?

I’ve actually done this poll before. Only 17% of the people I surveyed said they fell more on the “needs” side of the spectrum than the “opinions” side; 12 out of 70. That’s insane. Everyone else admitted they spend more time thinking about others’ opinions of them. I wonder what the numbers would be if we could calculate just how many hours we spend thinking about those opinions. I guarantee you it’s influencing the way we live, the things we buy, and it’s 100% influencing the way we think about and treat each other. No wonder so many people’s lives are so dark and scary, especially on the inside. It’s almost like this way of thinking is a master over us…

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.”

Matthew 6:24

This is the result. If you spend all of your time thinking about what others will think of you, you’re devoted to the master of approval. You’re sitting in sin or in a way of life that is not wise, but not only are you okay with it, you prefer it. Think about what kind of a friend you must be; “Yeah, this is good enough,” you say. “Maybe there’s something better out there for us but I’m good with this right here.” CS Lewis has something powerful to say to you:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

CS Lewis, in The Weight of Glory

I love how Jesus provides the double-edged warning in verses 19-21, because what happens when you do get what you want? If it doesn’t disintegrate in your hands, it may just up and walk away. Like the “cool” person at school that you finally convinced to like you. But you said “Hi,” to their ex in the hallway and now you’re cancelled.

Jesus makes a big point in all of this: when you serve God as your master, and you stop focusing on this need to be liked so much, you literally shine.

“…if your eye is healthy [aka focused on serving the right master], your whole body will be full of light.”

Matthew 6:22

Let’s do one last comparison:

On the one hand, we have the master of Approval. He knows that you desperately want someone to look at you and say “Yes, I like you,” even as a friend, let alone romantically. And he gets a thrill out of watching you work your tail off for it. He also knows how to get your attention. So he pulls all your strings and constantly teases you:

“Oh, just get those shoes. Then they’ll like you.”

“Once you convince them that that girl sent you pictures, then they’ll be your friend. Heck, even better-get her to send them and then you have real evidence you can share with them. She’ll never know.”

“One little sip, you don’t need any more. You do that, then they’ll like you. You’ll be fine.”

Some people have been serving that trash excuse of a master for 70 years. And they regret every single minute of it.

On the other hand, we have the master of Adonai; Yahweh Elohim, the God of the Universe Who is, in and of Himself, a community of love; eternally giving and receiving love in the Spirit on a level we can’t even begin to imagine. This master literally created you, breathed life into your lungs, and loves you so much He straight up died for you, even though you could never deserve it. He wants nothing from you other than an acknowledgment that you cannot do life alone, and when you do so He offers life abundantly, both now and forever, and has myriad examples to back His offer up.

One offers a lifetime of work for approval with no reward, and causes a lot of people to settle for a life of sin and shame. The other offers a lifetime of knowing you’re approved even when you don’t deserve to be, and an eternity of life and abundance even after death; not even death is a problem for these people. That’s awful shiny and pretty, don’t you think?

Seriously, why is this such a hard decision for so many of us?

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”

Matthew 5:3

It really does all come back to this every time; people who known they’re poor in spirit know that they have nothing to bring to the table on their own, which means they can be a friend who is humble. They know that their strength comes from God, who does not break down and decay and will never steal from you. They know that they don’t need to sin to keep people around. That’s attractive; that’s a way of life I want to live; that’s shiny.

People who know they’re poor in spirit know that God is all they have, because God is all they need.

And they know better than anybody, He is WAY more than enough.

Real Friends Show Love; Fake Friends Show Preference

An honest conversation on how we show love.
[6-minute read]

What is love?

Honestly. Think really hard about it before you answer because I bet that whatever you come up with is going to be different from whoever is sitting next to you (if you can even think of an answer – it’s honestly pretty hard for a lot of people).

How do you think a 6-year old would answer this question? Fortunately for you, dear reader, I’ve actually found some quotes from them. Here’s how a few 4-8 year olds describe love:

“I don’t know how to answer that question.” Love the honesty, Little Man. Sometimes I don’t know, either.

“Love feels kind of nice.” I think so, too. Or at least I hope so.

“Love is about happiness.” Copied and pasted straight from a Disney movie script.

“If a boy is mean to girls, that means they have a crush on you.” Honestly, did this come from a 4-year old or a college student?

Sure, these are funny. And I work with middle schoolers, so I can only imagine how they would describe love. But can I be real? I think these kids are describing what the majority of us believe about love in a way that is remarkably more honest than we adults would ever be. A 4-year old doesn’t just “get” what the word “love” should mean (When was the last time you saw a toddler share without being told? That kind of moment goes viral online because it’s so rare). They’re regurgitating what their parents and others around them are telling and showing them. Honestly, how heartbreaking is it to know that this precious little 5-year old girl is already saying things like “boys show that they like you by being mean to you”??? Who told her that? Who’s telling the boys at her school that?

We’re teaching kids this, and yet we wonder why rape culture is still a problem. But I digress.

Honestly, the word “love” is a problem in 2021’s version of Western culture. Why? Because everyone is worshiping the Self above all. Yourself is your highest authority. So love can mean anything to anyone anywhere at anytime and we’re just expected to not only be okay with it but to also figure out everyone else’s definition of love on our own. That sentence was even exhausting to write, let alone live out.

This makes things super confusing when Jesus says this in the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”

Matthew 5:43-44 ESV

Depending on who you ask, Jesus could be saying to make your enemies happy or to vote them into office or feed them, or evidently if you ask that little girl from earlier, to even be mean to them (which is directly counter to his first point???).

Like I said, exhausting.

Friendships, romantic relationships, families, and so many others are falling apart all over the world because nobody is willing to put a foot down and make a definition for love. We don’t want to hurt people, and we don’t want to be seen as being exclusive, but honestly people, you do realize that unless you’re exclusive, you can’t define anything, right? To define something for what it is will by nature exclude whatever it’s not. If I want to tell you what an iPhone is, I have to distinguish it as different and exclusive from an Android and vice versa. Otherwise, everything is the same and nothing matters (And yes, there are people who believe everything is one, but even they can’t practically live that out. Quit playing games, y’all).

So what is love? Because if Jesus is using it like we do, then there’s some serious ambiguity to work through here because I love BBQ sauce and I love my wife but that is nowhere close to the same thing.

Luckily for us, Jesus was not doing that. He spoke in a language called Aramaic, cousin to Hebrew in the same way Portuguese is to Spanish; close, but not the same. The word Jesus most likely would’ve used for “love” here was called “rakhmah”. But when Matthew wrote down the story of Jesus’s life, he did it in Greek. By then, looking back over Jesus’s life and actions, Matthew chose to use the Greek word “agape” here (As did literally every other New Testament author – it occurs 52 times in 1st John alone). What is agape?

The Bible Project puts it really well when they say that agape is “a choice that you make to seek the well-being of people other than yourself” (1). Jesus showed this in everything that He did, and according to Matthew 5, Jesus thinks the ultimate test of your ability to love is determined by how you treat the people you can’t stand, regardless whether your anger with them is justified.

Another way of saying this is that love is “giving someone what they need the most when they deserve it the least.” Sometimes we’re angry with others because they genuinely wronged us, and their treatment of us legitimately deserves judgment. These kinds people are really easy to hate. “You wronged me, so you’re cancelled,” we say. Or we live out; honestly, it doesn’t really matter how it comes out, we all think it.

The definitions the kids gave make a lot of sense when the person you love is someone who loves you. But it is everywhere around us and in us that if someone doesn’t love us back, they’re not worth our time. Showing love to people who could never and will never repay us looks, sounds, and feels stupid.

Don’t even try to convince yourself you’ve never been that person. You probably haven’t been able to make it a full week without being this person even a little bit. I know I sure haven’t. The only people we want as friends or in our family are people who only ever love us back. But like I said earlier, without a standard, not only is this confusing as heck, it’s literally impossible. Someone may very well think they’re showing you love by bringing up a hard truth that the two of you need to work through, but you’ll say it’s not love because it hurts. At the same time, your other “friend” will be asking you to sin to stay friends with them, or at least making things awkward if you try to do life Jesus’s way around them, and you’ll do whatever they want or whatever they’re doing just because you want them to like you.

Honestly, we’re all middle schoolers in our hearts in this way.

I get it. It’s really hard to give someone what they need when they have clearly done many things that 100% disqualify them from any kind of love or grace or blessing. Often, it hurts. Especially when it takes them a long time to figure out what you’re actually trying to do. But do a quick little thought experiment with me for a second;

What if God treated us this way? What if God only loved the people who loved Him first?

Y’all, that world would be terrifying. You know why? You sure as heck didn’t start off your life loving God. You only know you can love Him at all because He showed His love first.

In a world where God waited to show love until we showed it to Him first, chaos would reign, destruction running rampant and pain and evil dominating, totally unchecked. No form of joy, however small, would exist. No happiness would ever light up the darkness, and death would be the unavoidable end for all humanity.

But that’s not what happened.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.”

Isaiah 61:1 ESV

“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

Titus 3:3-7 ESV

Jesus says in Matthew 5 that we need to love, agape, the people who we can’t stand. And I don’t know if you knew this, but Jesus never usually gives a command without giving a why behind it (so if you’re the kind of person who can’t follow a God who requests blind faith from His followers, you can rest assured that the God of the Bible is nowhere close to that kind of God). Look at verse 45:

“…so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”

Matthew 5:45 ESV

Genesis 1, literally page 1 of the Bible, reveals that you and I were made in the image of God by His own hands (1:27). You were made to reflect God to the rest of creation. So why love the people you can’t stand?

Because that’s exactly what God did for you.

Even though your life is full of reasons for Him to hate you, He doesn’t:

“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:7-8 ESV

Jesus’s why when He says to love your enemies is literally so that you will be close to God – so you will fulfill the purpose for which you were made. You exist to love and give the people around you what they need the most, even though they definitely don’t deserve it.

You’ll never know the truth of this unless you choose to live it out. Jesus isn’t asking you to fully wrap your heart around this idea. All He’s asking is that you trust Him to put it into practice anyway. You’ll start to see the fruit as you do. If it wasn’t legit, it would’ve died out a long time ago. But Jesus’s way is still here, still changing lives and changing hearts literally thousands of years after He walked on the dirt of Israel, still as relevant as ever.

The power is in being humble enough to admit you needed help in the first place, not in picking and choosing who gets your love and who doesn’t. But you gotta get past yourself enough at the start to even begin experiencing it.

So, who irks you? Who gets on your last nerve? Go give them what they need. Right now. Help them. Sacrifice something of yourself to do it. See if Jesus was right.

Only you can know for yourself for sure. What will you do?

Dig Deeper

Pressing into our Doubts Can Lead us Straight to Jesus
3 minute read

I remember the first time I ever saw the Matrix: I was probably in middle school, maybe late elementary school, I’m not sure. But the memory of the experience itself is vivid and clear. There’s a lot going on in the Matrix trilogy, and I know a lot of you aren’t Matrix people. I get it. Sci-Fi isn’t for everyone (unless you start talking about the Avengers), so I won’t get into all the details. But there is one thing that I haven’t ever been able to shake.

Through the years, it’s always stuck with me that this idea of an entire world moving and working beneath what I perceive at a first glance absolutely fascinates me. To learn that there is more going on beneath the surface than I originally believed swings the door wide open to adventure, excitement, and all kinds of fun.

I think this is why I haven’t been able to shake it, though: every single day I’m learning that this thought of more to discover waiting for me below the surface of my perception is actually real. It’s everywhere. There is way more going on in the world than what we can see, or otherwise naturally apprehend.

The Bible has been teaching this for millennia, and to a degree, I’ve concurred. Paul says we don’t wrestle against flesh & blood, but spiritual powers. The entire book of Job is about an unseen deal between God & the enemy to test Job. I could go on.

What I’m learning though, is that this “unseen reality” motif is everywhere. Even in the abstract ideas and traditions that we carry on as Christians.

Don’t get me wrong – some traditions carried on by the church are vital, necessary, and sometimes even commanded by Jesus Himself; baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and others like marriage, service to the poor and underprivileged, etc.

But a lot of us have never stopped to ask ourselves why we do what we do. There might be reasons that I tell myself is my motivation for giving to the church, but is it really why I do it? Is it that reason that motivates me, or is there something deeper?

I’m finding that whenever I ask myself “Why do I do that this way?” or “Why do I even do this at all?” What ends up happening is 1 of 2 things:

EITHER:

  • I come to the conclusion that I’m doing what I’m doing for the wrong reasons, so I need to course-correct, and when I do, I fall ever more deeply in love with Him.

OR:

  • There’s an even better, fuller, more satisfying reason in Jesus to do what I do that I had overlooked, or had never been shown before, and I fall ever more deeply in love with Him.

Either way, they both end up in the same place: knowing why I believe what I believe always draws me closer to Jesus. Not once in my life has this ever resulted in growing a dislike for Him in me at all. It always shows Him to be more attractive and captivating then I had previously understood.

This is very difficult for people who have been taught to never doubt. That’s a big cancer in the church across the world that I’m hoping to help remove. Jesus never shuts down doubt, He invites His followers into an experience with Him. Thomas was never shamed for His doubt – He was invited to look at the fact of Jesus’s holes in His hands and side to prove the reality of what He hadn’t yet seen. He just had to dig a little deeper.

For example, why do I believe the Bible is inspired by God?

Answering that question with: “It tells me it is, and I believe it!” is good, but it’s not enough. I wish it were. God gave me a brain that never stops asking “Why?” Thankfully, He’s all about making His glory known, and He does it in ways that are anchored in facts. When I dug deeper into this belief, I found all kinds of fascinating reasons to love the Bible, believing that it came from God alone, through humans. In fact, the very information that shows how the Bible was written and compiled through human means and humans themselves is the very information that has convinced me it is from God alone.

So here’s my challenge: start asking yourself why you do what you do as you live your life. If you have the humility to second-guess yourself in your gut reactions and dig a little deeper into the things that you do, you just might end up right in front of Jesus.

And I’m telling you, there is no where else in the world you would want to be than with Him.

This is the Moment We Were Made For

A Christian Response to the COVID-19 Panic
(4-minute read)

Why has the entire world more or less collapsed over the Coronavirus so quickly? What sent humanity on such a quick downward spiral of terror & anxiety in such a short period of time (literally less than 4 months)? We seemed to be doing well enough before it hit, & there were plenty of other illnesses killing more & affecting more than COVID-19. So what makes this one different?

The reality is, nothing is different than any other pandemic virus the world has ever seen, aside from the group of people experiencing it. That’s it. There is no cure, & mortality rates have been presented so carelessly that nobody really knows what’s going on, other than the facts that this virus is highly contagious, & it has killed thousands in these four months. As a follower of Christ, I see nothing special about this virus, or humanity’s reaction to it. If we have an accurate understanding of the brokenness of humanity in sin, this panic shouldn’t surprise us at all. A deadly disease [depending on multiple factors] with no known cure & a contagion rate so high that even being within 6 feet of a COVID-19 patient can transmit it creates an environment where we need something to reassure us that everything is going to be okay. It forces us to admit our own inadequacy-there is nothing humanity can do to avoid death, sickness, peril, or evil, because it is within us; & this fact scares the daylight out of us. It should. We’re trying to fight a wildfire with an empty water pistol.

In his work The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn said it well:

“The line dividing good & evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

As followers of Christ, we cannot expect a humanity with no source of life in Him to not be afraid when they are faced with the reality of their own depravity. So when your atheist neighbors & agnostic family members are barricading their homes & stripping the local grocery stores of food, this is a logical behavior of one with no assured hope or foundation.

How we followers of Christ react, however, is a completely different story.

If we showed up at church last Sunday & sang “Yes, I will lift You high in the lowest valley; yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy,” or “Jesus! You make the darkness tremble; You silence fear!” or even “Don’t let your heart be troubled; hold your head up high & don’t fear evil, but fix your eyes on this one truth: God is madly in love with you! So take courage, hold on, be strong; remember where our help comes from!” OR EVEN “When peace like a river attendeth my way; when sorrows like sea billows roll–whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say: ‘It is well, it is well with my soul!” why do we then go home & panic out of a fear that says “No, I don’t really trust God-I’m going to let my panic drive me to do & say things I never would have otherwise & strike a level of fear into my heart & the hearts of my children & peers that drives us away from God”?

This is insanity. It has to stop. We cannot expect the world to understand the hope we have in Christ Jesus. But it should drive us to react to this disease in a way that makes them look to us for help. “Why aren’t you panicking?” “Why are you so confident right now?” Why aren’t you scared?”

God WILL move in this situation, He WILL make it work for good. But He, in this age, will do so more often than not THROUGH HIS PEOPLE.

So what? Your kid’s travel ball got cancelled. They’ll be okay. Their future IS NOT tied up in whether or not they even go to college, let alone play D1 sports. It’s wrapped up in God’s hands.

So your vacation to Cabo got cancelled & you can’t go to the beach. Who cares? You now have a week that you took off work to be intentional with your friends & family & SHOW them that you care about their wellbeing, both right now & eternally.

Most of all, who cares if Wal-Mart is out of toilet paper? You’ll find a solution–God will provide. (& to be honest, I never would’ve thought it would be necessary to write those sentences, but here we are).

Wake up, Christians. “I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” –Romans 8:38-39 CSB

There are needs all around you. Your neighbors have no hope. They are literally terrified at the thought of their own inability to respond to this crisis. To be sure, there are wise guidelines to follow & decisions to be made that come through the sovereignty of God in man-made enterprises like the CDC & the Presidency that we need to follow–we don’t have to have church in-person for a time. We can worship together online or in smaller groups & ride out the storm while God works in the chaos. That’s what my church is doing, & praise God that we are. But at the same time, we dare not sit back & twiddle our thumbs waiting for God to use somebody else to help bring hope in such a terrifying time. He never left that option open to us.

Beth Moore said it INCREDIBLY well yesterday via her Twitter:

“It would be a mistake for us in Christian circles to disregard the warnings about large gatherings. If the thought is, “We’re the church. We’ll do whatever we please & God will protect us,” He does not protect the proud. He opposes them. We are not snake handlers. We’re servants. Love our neighbor. Protect the vulnerable. Put others 1st. Pray hard for direction. Fellow ministry leaders, we need not fear that we will have no ministry. We’ve never been called to ministry more loudly, urgently and profoundly in our lifetimes than at this moment. Gear up.”

When she says “fellow ministry leaders”, she is not just talking to those in pastoral positions at your church. If you’re a follower of Christ, this call is for YOU.

So gear up, Church. If we were serious about our relationship with Christ, & we are honestly & authentically following Jesus, this is what we’ve been training for our entire believing lives. This is what you were made for.