This past week I've gotten the sense that in this season of my life God is freeing me to accomplish/create something big for His kingdom. I’ve been in constant prayer for what exactly this sort of adventure might look like. So yesterday, I turned to an Erwin Mcmanus sermon for some quotable wisdom. I was not let down.

“Every future that God wants to create, He will create through a human being who will listen, and say yes.”

As usual, Erwin was preaching directly to my soul. I believe in God’s plan for our lives. I believe His fully lived version of life is there as an open invitation to us, all we must do is listen, and say yes.

This morning, God gave me the follow up for Erwin’s lesson as I read Psalm 29. In it, the psalmist describes the power of the Lord’s voice. The Lord’s voice is “full of majesty”, it “breaks the cedars”. That same voice that spoke the earth into creation is Genesis 1 is the voice that calls to us from the depths of our souls, and His voice will do even greater things through us.

We heard His voice through His word, or the word that became flesh, and through His Holy Spirit, and we cannot ignore the call for we are the future God wants to create. We are the change He wants to bring. We are the love He wants to share, the song He wants to write, the mercy He wants to give, the homes He wants to build, the sermons He wants to preach. We are not the next generation of the church, we are this generation of the church.

The voice of the Lord is the root of all Kingdom impact, and to ignore it is to turn our backs on the life, the ministry, the greatness that God has called us to.

I will be the one who says yes.

Maybe I’ll start signing my letters that way.

-The one who says yes

The perfect person would make a terrible Christian.

Because what reason would they have for God?

Jesus is a doctor for the sick, not the healthy. He came to save the imperfect, not the perfect.

So why are we so afraid to confess our sin? Why do we allow ourselves to be dragged down and hidden by the burden of shame? Why do we find it so hard to believe Romans 8:1, that there really is “no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus”?

After much reflection I have landed on this…Sin is not the enemy of the Christian life, secret shame is the enemy of the Christian life.

We are all human, we are all weak, tired, broken cardboard warriors. Not a single one of us will escape this world without sinning. But here is something that donned on me the other day…

Jesus did not die so that we could never sin again. Jesus died to ensure that the weight of sin, and the baggage that comes along with it, are no longer ours to carry.

God’s plan for the world was not for everyone to become perfect after the sacrifice of His Son, but for everyone to become even more dependent on Him as a result of it, being set free from the shame and guilt and death that before had come saddled with sin.

If, when we sin, we allow ourselves to wallow in guilt and shame, then we are not accepting the cross. We are, in our own way saying, what you’ve done God, there’s no way it could possibly cover this. Not what I’ve done. But the truth, and the good news is that it does. God’s grace covers over a multitude of sins, and He gives us grace and freedom in place of guilt and shame. Conviction is fine. God is the righteous judge, He will convict from time to time. But shame and guilt, especially when kept a secret, acts as a larger barrier between us and God than the sin we committed in the first place.

This is the major misconception about the Christian life. It is not one of following legalistic rules and feeling awful about every questionable decision you make. It is a relationship that changes your heart to desire to do the good things of God, and lean on His grace, knowing it is sufficient whenever sin gets a foothold in out lives.

-jon

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear; because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not make perfect in love.”

We have no reason to fear in this life. Fear leads to worry and anxiety. Fear cripples us from doing good, and enables us to excuse doing evil. The majority of fear is a result of uncertainty about the future, fear of the unknown. This is true for me right now as a senior in college, I am undergoing some pretty big changes in my life, especially recently. It would be easy for me to become uneasy and fearful about the blaring unanswered questions having to do with my future. But fear of the unknown is impossible with God, because there is nothing unknown to Him.

It is like the great stories that Sam talks about at the end of The Two Towers.  “Full of darkness and danger they were…” Sam says. Our lives are full of darkness and danger, and we do not know the outcome, that’s what makes life exciting. But God does know the outcome.

We need never fear because of His perfect love (1 John 4:10).

We need never fear because we are following the one who is working out “all things for the good of those who love Him…” (Romans 8:28)

What’s the worst that could happen? Death? You’re talking about the one who defeated and overcame sin and death. (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)

Fear not, trust in the Lord, He is enough, and He desires to make us perfect in His love.

-jon

I recently changed my bio on Twitter. You know the short little blurb about yourself that appears at the top of your profile page under your name, the one that everyone tries to be so clever about? Well I beat everyone. Mine says ‘cardboard warrior’. Bet you don’t know what that means? But it sounds really indie and fresh doesn’t it?

I have coined this phrase in order to describe the fragility of human righteousness. We are all capable of amazing spiritual feats. We read stories about the amazing miracles performed by Moses in the Bible, or the powerful words spoken by the prophets. But we also hear about healings, spiritual and physical, that happen today. We see Pastors and high school leaders and small group leaders and friends who are just on fire for the Lord and changing lives. All around us, and even in our own lives, we see people achieving things for the Kingdom of God that truly leave us astonished.

I am myself a small group leader, and at times the temptation is to call myself a ‘very good small group leader’. Over the last three or four summers I have watched the people I lead in that group grow exponentially in their faith and devotion to the Lord. Praise God for that. The temptation, however, is to think that my ministry in that small group is what makes me righteous. I feel so powerful when I’m leading a small group, or doing a talk for a group of high school students, or writing a blog post about Jesus. I begin to feel like I could conquer the world. These are mountaintop moments in my life.

But, there are many late nights, even after small group sometimes, when I discover how weak I really am. You know what I mean. These are the times when your shadow life, the part of yourself that you’re trying to leave behind, creeps back in with a vengeance. And the warrior feeling begins to wear off as you are confronted with the weakness of your own righteousness.

It’s in moments like these where I feel like one of those old cardboard cutouts of professional athletes. I used to have one of Michael Jordan palming a basketball. He stood 6’6”, muscular, and stern in my room for years. From the right angle, he looked like the fiercest basketball player in the world, like he could take on anyone. But when pushed or pressured even in the slightest, it would become all to clear that he was only made of cardboard.

This is a cardboard warrior, this is what happens when we are confronted with the fragility of our righteousness. This is who I am.

This realization can happen often, can happen quickly, and can happen to anyone. It happens all throughout the Bible. It happened to David. He was a man after God’s own heart, a writer of Psalms, and yet in the course of one chapter, we see him fall to the sins of lust, adultery, deceit, and murder. (2 Samuel 11) Simon Peter is the same way, within the matter of a few verses in Matthew 16 we see Peter go from being the rock that Jesus’ church will be built on, to Jesus calling him Satan. And then later on in the Gospel, we see Peter stand up for Jesus so intensely that he is willing to cut someone’s ear off, but only a few chapters later, when a young girl asks him about Jesus, he denies even knowing the man. This is the plight of the cardboard warrior, this is human powered righteousness.

When we try and depend on our own ability to be righteous, we discover that we are nothing but cardboard warriors, trying to fight in this world, but push over by even the slightest temptation. We do not have the power to remain righteous, and good, and loving, and joyful, and peaceful, and gracious. Only God can make a cardboard warrior into a king, or an apostle, or a missionary and only God can you up after you’ve been pushed over to make you into a warrior again. Because even when you get blown over, you know that it is God’s righteousness and grace that gives you the strength to keep fighting.

-jon

Unhappiness, for me, can often be better described as a lack of fulfillment. I have been in this state for some time now, and I have only just recently taken some time off from my pouting in order to do a bit of reflection and prayer about it. Here is what I’ve found.

I thought back to the times when I felt most fulfilled, when I felt the “happiest”. I asked myself questions like, what were the circumstances, who was I around, what was a doing, how much time was a spending with the Lord, how much was I working, how much was I not working, things like that. After hours of thought, I found the common denominator. The question had the same general answer all the way, no matter what the circumstance was; what gifts am I using?

God has gifted me with a passion to create and the ability to lead. And as I look back on times in my life where I felt true fulfillment and purpose, without a doubt, every time I was endeavoring into something creative and or leading a team of some sort.

The answer is simple, the use of our gifts and passions brings us joy by serving others.

And this extends to you no matter what your gifts are. Whether you are an encourager, a teacher, a wise man or woman. Or it could be more physical things. If you love to write, read, garden, or build things, no matter what it is, if it’s a true passion of yours, it will help bring you joy.

Now I am not equating gifts and talents with fulfillment. We can only find true fulfillment in Christ. But I know that I am much more joyous, kind, generous, and willing to do His Kingdom work in this world when I’m working on things that I’m passionate about. And guess what? God made you passionate about these things for a reason, maybe even perhaps because He wants to use them for His glory.

To live your life without using your passions and talents is like a cheetah who decides never to run fast. He’s denying his true self, it’s how he was created. And while I’m not sure if running swiftly through the plains of Africa bring the cheetah joy or not, you can be sure that he uses his gift every chance He gets.

So wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing, find a way to use your gifts. Look for any and every opportunity to do so. It will not only make you happier, but it will make others better. No matter how big or small, spiritual or not spiritual your gift is. God gives us the door to life lived fully and completely, and the exercising of gifts and talents is one of the many keys through that door.


-jon