97secondswithgod

Day 28. Path.

2009-02-28T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:28
In the way of righteousness there is life;
along that path is immortality.

What a great verse to end this chapter on, but sometimes I forget the truth of this. It is horrible to say, but sometimes I forget that I have found the path that leads to immortality. I have found the path of immortality. I love God. I love Jesus. I love the Holy Spirit, but I get used to them. They become ordinary to me and I don’t share them with other people because I forget that I have not found a hobby or even a life changing bit of wisdom.

I have found a trail that leads to immortality.

I have found the answer, the path, the truth that leads to immortality. But do I believe that? Do my actions indicate that I believe that?

What if we all really did? What if, in depths of our hearts and souls, we believed that we had discovered the path to immortality? What would that change? What would we do differently?

For one, you’d have to look crazy. There is no sane way to tell someone, “Come here, I found something the other day. I know where the path is that leads to immortality.”

And you couldn’t take God casually. It would get really hard to treat him like a part of your life instead of your whole life.

So have you ever forgotten that who we’ve found isn’t just a friendship or a fulfillment of hopes once broken? Have you ever forgotten that God is the path to immortality?

p.s. This marks day 28 of the walk through of Proverbs 12. Can't believe it's already done. Thanks for reading through it with me. I've got two other series planned for this site, one called "Black on Black" but I need to focus on finishing the Stuff Christians Like book in March. Hopefully we can pick things back up on this site this Spring.

Thanks for the support
Jon

Day 27. Prize.

2009-02-27T02:00:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:27
The lazy man does not roast his game,
but the diligent man prizes his possessions.

The other day I wrote a headline for a freelance client. This is what it said, "Killing time should be considered a crime of the highest offense."

I didn't always see things that way. For decades I didn't understand that time is one of, if not the, greatest non renewable possession I have. And I have to be diligent about it, because there is so little of it. I can work more and earn more money. I can spend more money and get more stuff. But I will never, ever be able to add a single hour to my day. Each day will forever contain 24 hours. I am learning to prize that possession. I am learning to be diligent and generous with it, but above all, I think it's critical that we know where our time is going. Sometimes, an action as simple as keeping track of your hours for a week will reveal some surprising things about what you care most about. At times in my life, a time audit would have revealed that TV was my god and God was my hobby.

So the question today is, in what ways are you prizing the possession of time?

Day 26. Trampled.

2009-02-26T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:26
A righteous man is cautious in friendship,
but the way of the wicked leads them astray.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait one second, aren't we supposed to love everyone? Aren’t we supposed to be kind to everyone and even pray for our enemies? If we're cautious in friendship, aren't we holding something back? Shouldn't we throw out our friendship to anyone and everyone that needs it like Mrs. Kappopoluos gave out Werther's caramels in seventh grade? She wasn't cautious. If you came into the principal's office you could grab a piece of candy from the bowl on her desk. It was right there for everyone. Shouldn't our friendship be like that?

Those are some of the thoughts that went through my head when I first read this verse, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. It's not encouraging us to be jerks, it's challenging us to be wise in the way we share the gift of friendship. Because friendship is not a one way street. When you become a friend of someone, a true friend, you invite them to shape your life to a degree. You invite them to influence you and challenge you and impact you. And that’s a dangerous gift to be cavalier with. Proverbs 13:20 says that "He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm." Matthew 7:6 says "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces."

Friendship is sacred and if you're not careful with it, you run the risk of being trampled.

Are you being cautious in who you give the gift of friendship to?

Day 25. Heart.

2009-02-25T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:25
An anxious heart weighs a man down,
but a kind word cheers him up.

I love the simplicity of this verse. When I'm stressed out, when I am panicked about something, like say turning in a manuscript to Zondervan for the first book I've ever written, the culmination of a lifelong dream, the content of which holds the potential to either steer people to the beauty of a God that means everything to me or push them away depending on how it's written? When I feel like that, I tend to complicate things. My anxiety is a tangled ball of twine and angst and Salt and Vinegar Pringles. I look at it and I think, I don't even know where to start with all that mess. I don't know what's going on. Why do I feel this way? This whole situation feels impossibly complex, but it’s not really.

An anxious heart weighs you down.

A kind word cheers you up.

Anxiety goes down.

Kindness goes up.

Pretty simple, and the best part of this verse is the subtle charge it gives us to distribute kind words like candy to our friends. Seriously, do hear how powerful a kind word is? Your friends have hearts that are weighing them down. They have hearts that are heavy and burdensome. And you have everything you need to cheer them up. A kind word.

It's simple.

Day 24. Rule.

2009-02-24T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:24
Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor.

I want that verse to lose the word “will.” When I read that, I want it to say, “Diligent hands rule” as in they’re doing it right now, with absolutely no delay. They did it instantly without any work or effort or sacrifice. They just rule, not “will rule” as in sometime in the future, but right now in the present. But then that wouldn’t be diligence would it?

And in the second half of the verse, Proverbs 12 does what it always does, it states the obvious with inescapable clarity. It doesn’t argue with you about the middle of your story. It won’t debate the exact moment you might end up in slave labor if you’re lazy. It just tells you that’s where you’ll end. “You might love the way the ride starts. You might feel special and rich and well taken care of. You might even enjoy the middle part of your journey, right up until the end. The end is going to be slave labor. Let’s not argue about the specifics, please just know that’s where you are headed.”

So the question today is, which path are you walking, the one that ends in diligence or the one that ends in slavery?

Day 23. Folly

2009-02-23T02:25:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:23
A prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of fools blurts out folly.

One of my favorite prayers before I talk with people is "God, keep my words few and true." Few because I tend to ramble and true because I tend to exaggerate. And by exaggerate I of course mean lie, which is something I wrote about yesterday. The other way I've tried to regulate this fire hose mouth of mine and prevent my heart from blurting out folly is by trying to see how many questions people ask me in a given day. The truth is that on most days, no one asks me a question because I'm so busy rapid fire talking that they never need to ask me anything. I've already told them everything. I've already blurted out every possible thought and detail and idea I have so there's no reason for them to ever ask me a question. Which is foolish.

How many questions a day do people ask you?

Day 22. Camp

2009-02-22T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:22
The LORD detests lying lips,
but he delights in men who are truthful.

There's no middle ground with God. I feel like I've been saying that same thing all week, but it's true. He's an extreme God. That's one of the many things I love about Him. He's not fuzzy. He doesn't mince words or leave things half said or ever waver on things. He detests lying. He delights in men who are truthful. It's not that He kind of doesn't sort of care for lying lips. It 's not that He probably maybe enjoys the occasional truthful statement.

He detests and delights.

He goes all the way and leaves us with little room for debate about what He feels about the words that come out of our mouths. He sets up two rival groups that are miles and miles away from each other. Detest and delight. So simple. So strong. So clear.

I am often tempted to see "exaggerating" as different from lying. This usually means puffing up my chest or meager accomplishments in life to appear cooler, smarter, more successful etc. when I meet new people. I want them to know right away that I'm special and important and worth something. Exaggerating though is just another form of lying. And I wish when I was tempted to do it, I would ask myself, "I am going to do something right now that God detests or delights in?"

Day 21. Harm

2009-02-21T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12: 21
No harm befalls the righteous,
but the wicked have their fill of trouble.

How do you not look at that verse and immediately come up with a list of harmful things that have befallen you or people you know that are righteous? How do you not instantly think, “If that’s true, then why did my friend lose her job? Why did my Uncle, the pastor, cheat on his wife? Those are bad thing that happened to good people. Why?”

I think those are really fair questions and to be honest with you I asked some of my own when I read this. What I think though is that sometimes I forget that the Bible is God’s word. We might interpret it and analyze it and study it, but ultimately, it’s God’s word. And the truth of the matter is, that since it’s His word, He gets to define the words the way He wants. Maybe His definition of “harm” is very different from mine. Maybe to Him, harm means “eternal separation from God” and this verse is really about how there is nothing that can separate us from God. Maybe that’s the only form of “harm” that really matters. Maybe this verse is like Romans 8:38-39:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Maybe the promise isn’t that we won’t die early or be hurt often or bruised many times on this earth, but that no true harm, separation from Him, will ever befall us.

Day 20. Sidelines

2009-02-20T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:20
There is deceit in the hearts of those who plot evil,
but joy for those who promote peace.

There is no Switzerland when it comes to Proverbs 12:20. There is no third option, no category of “neutral.” You either plot evil or you promote peace. Both are actions, both are deliberate activities that take forethought and planning and sweat. We don’t get to enjoy the sidelines in life. I wish we did because sometimes I am really lazy and it would be nice to say “not my problem” when we run into patches of life that are not peaceful. But we don’t get to. We are called to promote peace and when we do, we’ll find something far better than comfort or convenience or easy living. We’ll find joy.

Have you ever tried to sit out of a situation only to have God call you right back into it?

Day 19. Half Life

2009-02-19T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:19
Truthful lips endure forever,
but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.

Lying is exhausting because a lie has such a short lifespan. Sure, the damages of it can last a lifetime but the lie itself is so temporary and paper thin. You have to constantly nourish it and grow it and feed it and protect it and guard it against prying eyes.

The truth on the other hand requires no maintenance.

You don’t have to elaborate it. It’s the truth.

You don’t have to embellish it. It’s the truth.

You don’t have to come back and check on it again and again and again to make sure it’s doing alright. It’s the truth.

It’s a lot easier to maintain and endures forever. Which is one more reason we should all tell it.

Have you ever lied because you thought it would be easier and found out it’s really an exhausting alternative to telling the truth?

Day 18. Bandages

2009-02-18T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:18
Reckless words pierce like a sword,
but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

I wrote about this verse a few weeks ago on Stuff Christians Like and I love it because it’s so simple.

Reckless words pierce. Wise words heal.

I don’t need some complicated thought to figure out if the words I used in any given day were kind or just or compassionate. I only need to ask myself, “Did what I say today, bring healing or a wound? Were my words a sword or a bandage?” It’s an easy question to ask but sometimes a difficult one to answer.

The other reason I love this verse, the reason that’s hidden a little deeper, is the relationship between a sword and a wound. The truth is that sometimes I wound others with my words because I’m trying to heal a wound I have. I feel insecure about a comment someone left on the site so I cut them down. I feel stupid so I attack someone else’s intelligence. I feel unpopular so I pierce their confidence. The greatest holes I cause in other people often start with the holes I see in my own life.

So that’s the question of the day, are you causing wounds or healing hurts with your words?

Day 17. Witness

2009-02-17T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:17
A truthful witness gives honest testimony,
but a false witness tells lies.

At first glance this verse seems like the simplest verse in all of Proverbs 12. Tell the truth. Don’t lie. It’s hard to extract some hidden gem of insight from something so straight forward. But when I spent some time with it, I noticed that it’s not written the way I want to read it. I want to read this verse as “A truthful witness does not lie” or even better, “A truthful witness stays out of situations that don’t involve them.” But that’s not what it says. In fact, I think there is a world of difference between not lying and telling the truth.

A truthful witness gives honest testimony.

We don’t get the convenience of silence.

We don’t get the comfort of inaction.

We don’t get the false safety of minding our own business.

We are called to give honest testimony.

We have a responsibility. There is an action we are called to. We must give honest testimony. You don’t get to stay quiet. Sometimes you won’t get to “stay out of it.” As an honest witness you’ll be called to give honest testimony. Which is different from not lying. A lot different.

If you want to “not lie” you can do that hiding under your bed, avoiding the messiness and tangled nature of most real relationships. But if you want to be a truthful witness. If you want to live the truth, you can’t stay home or ostrich in the sand the things you witness away. You have to give honest testimony.

Have you ever stayed quiet because you thought that silence was more honest than involvement?

Day 16. Insults

2009-02-16T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:16
A fool shows his annoyance at once,
but a prudent man overlooks an insult.

If they ever make a blogger’s version of the Bible, this verse should be in there. This is the verse I constantly come back to when someone says something mean or hurtful or tries to make me look dumb on the blog. I want to respond. Right that second I want to fire off a comment or return their hate mail or use the site to launch a full on attack against that person. But that’s what a fool does. A fool responds at once. A fool gives someone that’s throwing a rock an even bigger platform by acknowledging the comment and getting into a conversation about it.

A prudent man, overlooks an insult. A prudent person realizes that an instant response to an insult is probably going to be emotion driven, if not flat out designed for revenge. Whether that’s on a blog or in a conversation with a coworker or at the dinner table with your husband.

I do respond sometimes to people that say hurtful things. Sometimes I’ve made a mistake and have said something that offended them. Sometimes I need to apologize. Sometimes they’re just hurting me because they’re running from their own hurt. Sometimes my wife needs to talk some sense in to me before I hit "send" on an email I'll regret. But above all, I’m learning to overlook an insult. It’s not easy, but I don’t like to be foolish.

How do you respond to insults?

Day 15. Advice

2009-02-15T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:15
The way of a fool seems right to him,
but a wise man listens to advice.

I know I need advice. I’ve burned myself enough times in the past that I realize now that I need advice before I make most decisions. But now, what I do when I’ve got something that “seems right” to me and I’m afraid of someone telling me no or wait, I’ll tell them my idea really quickly. I’ll just overwhelm them with a steady stream of words until they’re blubbering on the other end of the phone against my torrent of adjectives and analogies.

Eventually, if you talk fast enough and use enough words, most people will surrender and say, “That seems like a good idea.” But not my friend Dwayne. He makes me repeat myself. Sometimes I think it’s because he wants to be a good listener and really hear what I’m saying, but sometimes I think it’s because he wants me to hear the words coming out of my own mouth. He wants me to say what I just tried to slide by him at rapid speed one more time because it might have seemed right in my head, but on closer inspection it’s a really dumb idea. And if I repeat it, if I slow it down and listen to what I’m saying, I’ll hear the error of my ways. That’s why I love talking to Dwayne. That’s why it’s hard to talk to Dwayne. Because he makes me listen, both to his advice and to my own words.

Who do you listen to?

Day 14. Seeds

2009-02-14T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:14
From the fruit of his lips a man is filled with good things
as surely as the work of his hands rewards him.

Farmers are really deliberate. A farmer doesn’t just casually pick out his crop and then scatter the seeds to the wind with the hope that they will blossom into big, strong, fruit bearing trees. A farmer in Cape Cod would never wake up one day and think, “Instead of cranberries, I’m going to try to grow beets in my bog.” They do things on purpose because they want their land to produce the most fruit possible. But have I ever thought of my words that way? I’ve seen the negative consequences before, I’ve been burned by stupid, hurtful things I’ve said, but eliminating the bad is different than planting the good.

If the fruit of my lips is going to fill me with good things, what words do I need to plant today? Who do I need to encourage? Who do I need to challenge? Who do I need to pray for? How can I be as deliberate as a farmer with the words I seed in the conversations I have?

Day 13. Trouble

2009-02-13T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:13
An evil man is trapped by his sinful talk,
but a righteous man escapes trouble.

This verse is not written the way I want to read it. I want it to say, “but a righteous man never experiences trouble.” I want a promise that I won’t go through trouble, that I’ll be a million miles away when trouble enters the picture, but alas, that is not what the verse says. It says a “righteous man escapes trouble” and you can only escape something you are close to.

When a house burns down three miles away from you, you don’t throw your television through the second story window to escape. There’s no need to. We don’t have to escape something that is far away. Escape is an activity born from intimacy.

I’d like to think that my status as a Christian means I won’t ever get close to trouble, that hardship will never find my home. But it might, for all of us, it might. Trouble could breathe down your neck it’s so near, but we will escape. If God’s word is true, and I believe it is, we will escape.

Day 12. Sexy vs. the Roots

2009-02-12T02:45:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:12
The wicked desire the plunder of evil men,
but the root of the righteous flourishes.

Roots are pretty boring. At first. You don’t see them. You can’t feel them. You don’t know how strong they are or that they even exist.

Plunder is pretty exciting. At first. It’s shiny and forbidden. It’s free and exotic. You’ve got something new and different and off limits. It’s visually and emotionally intoxicating.

But over time, roots grow big trees. Roots get better and stronger and more important. What is hidden comes to light.

Plunder loses it’s shine. Consequences catch up. What we thought was sexy is now suddenly empty.

Are you living a life of roots or plunder right now?

Day 11. Land

2009-02-11T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:11
He who works his land will have abundant food,
but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.

I love this one. We all have land. Opportunities that we are given and asked to work. And when we do, they yield abundant food. But how often do we ignore the land we have? The jobs we have? The friends we have? The situations we have and chase fantasies in far off lands with far off people instead? I struggle with this every time I visit a really interactive blog. I immediately think, “I need to be doing more with video and live chat and graphics and and and.” Suddenly, the land I have, writing, becomes really small and unimportant as I chase fantasies.

What land do you have that you are taking for granted right now?

What fantasies are you chasing?

Day 10. Return

2009-02-10T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:10
10 A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal,
but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.

Having unwittingly participated in the death of our only pet, a beta fish named Baby Neptune, I’m in no position to talk about the first half of this verse. But the second half reminded me of an issue I’ve had with email lately. I realized that sometimes when I send someone an email thanking them for doing something for me, I get frustrated if they don’t email me back. I didn’t realize this at first, but I think that I often send the appreciation more as a way to make them think I am an appreciative person and in turn earn a reply thank you email than to actually show my gratitude. When I don’t get that response, when my thank you email goes unread or unreturned or unnoticed, I get grumpy. That is stupid, but even that small act of kindness carries hidden expectations and unwritten rules.

Day 9. Nobody

2009-02-09T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:9
Better to be a nobody and yet have a servant,
than pretend to be somebody and have no food.

This verse reminded me of something from the movie, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Matt Damon's character, a con artist, says, it’s better to “be a fake somebody than a real nobody." I thought that was such a perfect way to capture our desire to be somebody. To matter. To have a life and a name and a reputation that was important or respected.

But this verse hits hard at the temptation to pretend to be somebody and the emptiness that results when you fake your life. You are left with nothing because no one can really knew you. Even your friends that you might attract by pretending to be somebody can't really love you because the person they're trying to love doesn't actually exist. It's a character. It’s a composite drawing of traits and emotions and words that you've constructed to look well put together. To look like you’ve got it figured out.

But at the end of that journey, at the end of trying to pretend to be somebody, you can't help but be left hungry. For attention. For affection. For companionship. For validation, for all the things you thought you'd get if you were somebody, but instead you just found more hunger.

Let's be nobodies instead of pretending to be somebody.

Day 8. Praise

2009-02-08T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:8
A man is praised according to his wisdom,
but men with warped minds are despised.

I think praise and wisdom are often linked together because if you receive praise without wisdom, it can crush you. Proverbs 27:21 says "The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but man is tested by the praise he receives."

I never saw praise as something dangerous until I read that verse. I never knew how intoxicating it could be or damaging it could be if used in the wrong way, if applied to a life that lacked wisdom. But when wisdom is present, when the praise is given "according" to a person's wisdom, I think it can bring encouragement and hope.

Be careful about how you receive praise. Always make sure that the place you file it away is in a folder named "wisdom." The folder I often try to put praise in is named "Jon is awesome" and that leads me into trouble.

Have you ever found yourself intoxicated by praise?

Day 7. House

2009-02-07T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:7
Wicked men are overthrown and are no more,
but the house of the righteous stands firm.

What's the opposite of overthrown? Is it thrown? I'm not sure, but to be overthrown means that at some point you were in power. To fall from a great height, you have to have reached a great height first.

This verse doesn't say, "The wicked will be low and continue to be low for all time." It says they will be overthrown. It essentially says they will prosper. They will live large and stand high. For a while. But eventually they will be no more. The challenge is that we might never see the outcome.

God rarely seems to define timeframes the same way we would. So right now you might be watching someone else on a great height. You might be wondering when they will be overthrown. You might never see their "no more" in your lifetime. But that's not what matters. The second half of the verse should be our focus. Building a house that is righteous. Standing firm. I think that's where we need to live in this small passage, in our own house.

Do you ever watch other people instead of building your own house?

Day 6. Words

2009-02-06T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:6
The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood,
but the speech of the upright rescues them.

There are going to be roughly a million verses about speech in Proverbs and I'm pretty happy about that because I tend to run my mouth. The thing that's interesting about this verse is that it doesn't say who the words are lying in wait for.

Did you notice that? It's easy to assume that it's other people. That the words are going to wound others, but then in the second part of the verse, the consequences of speech are assigned to the speaker, not someone else.

So maybe the first person the words of the wicked are lying in wait for is the person speaking them. Maybe the blood my wicked words want the most is my own. Certainly I've wounded people with my gossip, but I think the person that suffers the most when I speak wickedly is me. That's my blood. I do not escape unscathed when I speak wickedly.

Have you ever wounded yourself with your own words?

Day 5. Plans

2009-02-05T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:5
The plans of the righteous are just,
but the advice of the wicked is deceitful.

This is probably dumb, but sometimes I feel guilty for making plans. I feel like I shouldn't have to make plans, I should just pray more. I feel like my options are to either plan or pray. For instance, I want to write a book and speak at more churches, but if I actually call churches and conferences and make plans to do that, God will be disappointed in me. He'll look down from heaven and grumble, "Why do you keep making plans? I want you to wait at home, on the couch and let me provide you everything you need." And didn't Proverbs 12:2 say that favor comes from the Lord?

But here, the righteous are making plans and the plans are just. They have not failed because they made plans. They are not sinning because they have made plans. I think it’s OK to prepare. To work hard on our dreams and our goals. I don't think making plans means we don't trust God. In fact, it might actually be an act of trust. Because when you plan, you put yourself out there. Planning takes hope and trust in a Lord that knows the outcome of all situations but might not have shared them with you yet.

Which is better to do, plan or pray? I think the answer is "yes."

Day 4. Crown

2009-02-04T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:4
A wife of noble character is her husband's crown,
but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones.

I once heard someone say, "When your wife is for you, it doesn't matter if the rest of the world is against you. When your wife is against you, it doesn't matter if the rest of the world is for you." For some reason that stuck in my head. But this verse is a lot stronger than that simple platitude.

"Decay in his bones" is a pretty graphic description of how invasive marital disharmony is. It's not like you have a bad marriage but can shake it off when you go to work or when you are hanging out with friends or shut the front door of your house and go out into the world.

It gets inside you, it flavors your every thought, tempers your actions and attitude. On the converse, a wife of noble character is to be celebrated. I love that it doesn't say, "A wife of noble character should be treasured forever quietly in your heart."

Relating the wife to a crown feels like a very public declaration of her beauty. The husband isn't hiding the fact that he has a noble wife. If you walked around wearing a crown all day, it would be the first thing people see. You'd be proud of it and vocal about it. So if you have a wife of noble character, shout. Sing. Let your world see your crown.

Day 3. Later

2009-02-03T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:3
A man cannot be established through wickedness,
but the righteous cannot be uprooted.

Once I establish myself, once I get my feet on the ground and have a solid foundation and a stable career, then I'll really have the resources I need to give to God. Imagine how much God will be able to do once I've established myself.

No one ever says that out loud, but sometimes it's easy to live. To make God a "later god." I'll live for you later. I'll give to you later. I'll worship you later. First let me take care of this thing called my life.

You won't be established that way. God is a God of now, as in "I want right now. Not later, not someday. I want to love you right now, right here." And when He does, when that's our foundation, we cannot be uprooted.

Have you ever tried to make God a later god?

Day 2. Favor

2009-02-02T02:30:00.000-08:00

Proverbs 12:2
A good man obtains favor from the LORD,
but the LORD condemns a crafty man.

If I had the right plans, everything would be OK. Everyone else I know has a carefully laid out vision for the rest of their lives. Especially at the start of a new year. If I could only plan the right way, everything would all work out in my favor.

At least that's what I think most days. I look at all my Christian friends and imagine they’ve got it all figured out. They’ve got purpose and direction and goals. And I’ve got a tangle of raw ideas that never seem to unravel the way I really want them to. So I start worshipping the act of planning. I start making an idol out of this fictional plan in my head that is going to save the day and give me a stress free life.

I forget that favor comes from the Lord and that when I covet something someone else has or I perceive they have, I shift into crafty mode in about 2.2 seconds.

Favor can only come from the Lord but I often look there last.

Where do you look for favor?

Day 1. Stupid

2009-02-01T02:30:00.000-08:00

(For the next 28 days, I’m going to walk through Proverbs 12 verse by verse, with short, quick thoughts. I hope you’ll read along with me.)

Proverbs 12:1
Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,
but he who hates correction is stupid.

I like this verse for a few reasons. First of all, it comes right out and says that if you hate correction, you're stupid. No wasted words, no soft peddling the truth or hand holding in the delivery. Yeah, you're stupid. Whenever I try to say, "The Bible is so complicated, I can't read it because it’s so difficult to figure out," I need to remember this verse.

Second, it drives home that we're going to be wrong. We're going to make mistakes. I get so stuck, so often on trying to be a perfect Christian. But in this verse, we're not told that the person that needs correction is stupid. We're not told that the person that made a mistake and needs a correction is stupid, we're told that the person that hates it is stupid. Big difference.

Third, it says we're supposed to "love discipline." Before I started getting up at 5:00AM to write Stuff Christians Like each morning I couldn’t stand discipline. At best, I could tolerate it. And I’d say we’re becoming better friends right now, me and discipline, but loving it is a whole different ball game. When is the last time you could honestly say that you "loved" it?

How's your relationship with discipline these days?

Two words.

2009-01-28T04:05:00.000-08:00

I want to ask you for two words, but the two words I'm talking about won’t make sense unless you read this verse:

The LORD is my strength and my shield;
my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.
My heart leaps for joy
and I will give thanks to him in song.
Psalm 28:7

That verse ends with the phrase, "in song." That is going to be the author's method of giving thanks. So what is yours? If you rewrote that for your own life, what would it say? Mine would say "in writing." I will give thanks to him in writing.

With the words I write on these blogs, with the words I write in the book and any other books I get to publish, with every word I pen, I am going to give thanks.

What are your two words?

At work?
In meetings?
At school?
During homework?

What are your two words?

Hiding in fields.

2009-01-23T04:14:00.000-08:00

I think there are a few things I'm supposed to be doing right now, one of which is writing more. I feel that 97secondswithGod, prodigaljon and stuffchristianslike, are what God wants me to focus on right now. But for a variety of reasons, all three of those sites only constitute a thin sliver of my week.

It's easy to get frustrated about that. To think, "Ugh, I have a call, I have an idea of the direction I'm supposed to be going, why am I not going at the speed I want to?" Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever thought, "I'm not were I'm supposed to be right now. I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I have more to give."

Maybe not, but that's where I'm at this morning. And while praying through that I felt like God reminded me that He's still in the business of hiding people in fields.

Which is a weird kind of reminder, but when I looked at the story of David in 1 Samuel it made sense. David didn't just receive a call or a suggestion or a "what if" from God, he was anointed King of Israel. In 1 Samuel 16:13, after he's anointed, it says, "from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power. And then he went back to tend some sheep."

It doesn't say that last line but it should, because that's what happened. The rightful king of Israel returned to the field. Even when David becomes a member of Saul's court, it says in 1 Samuel 17:15 "but David went back and forth from Saul to tend his father's sheep in Bethlehem."

It's easy to look at our lives and think, "Why am I working here God? Why am I a part of this church or this ministry or this whatever? I should be doing great things for you! I should be starting a new, all consuming adventure with you. Right this second!"

But I think that sometimes, out of His infinite love and wisdom, God chooses to hide us in fields. Why? I don't know. Maybe he wants us to wrestle more bears before we face Goliath. Maybe He's got a really important message He wants to whisper to us and it can only be heard in the loneliness of a field. Maybe Job 23:9-10 answers this question better than I ever could:

"When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him. But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold."

Maybe God has you in a field because He wants to introduce you to the world as gold.

I don't know, but I rest in the fact that I serve a God that does. I rest in the fact that I serve a God that knows exactly where I am and has a purpose for that unique spot, whether it's a field or a kingdom, a mission field or a corporate meeting.

Ah snap, hate mail!

2009-01-19T03:00:00.000-08:00

"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” Matthew 5:11

If I truly believed that verse, I would respond to hate mail with a thank you note. I would receive criticism that was meant to wound, as a gift. A confirmation that I was doing the right thing and was in fact blessed. But I don’t right now. Most of the time I just get mad. I act surprised that God would allow something like that to happen as I try my best to do the work I feel like He’s laid out for me. Maybe, just maybe, instead of reacting to hate with hate, I need to believe what Jesus said in Matthew and react with thanksgiving.

How would the way you react to persecution be different if you really lived Matthew 5:11?

p.s. please remind me of this post when the book I'm writing comes out.

Casual.

2009-01-17T03:54:00.000-08:00

We might take the Bible casually, but you know who doesn’t? satan.

He knows God’s word inside and out and loves nothing more than to use it as a tool of condemnation and attack. That’s why he’s the father of lies. He tries to wound us with our own weapons. Even Christ experienced that in the desert when satan quoted the Bible as a temptation in Matthew 4:5-6.

What does that mean? We shouldn’t take the Bible casually. We shouldn’t assume that the verses pressed upon our hearts are always going to be gifts. satan will use anything against us, even the Bible.

(And yes, I lowercased the s on purpose.)

The cause and the source.

2009-01-15T04:10:00.000-08:00

When I feel weary, as I do this morning, my first inclination is spin my heart and my head trying to identify the cause of my discomfort. But I wonder if it would be better for me to focus less on the cause of my sorrow and more on the source of my joy, Christ?

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Colossians 3:2.

This is 5:09 AM.

2009-01-13T04:01:00.001-08:00

I've written about Isaiah 30:18 a million times, but a few minutes ago, while doing my quiet time I was struck by a picture it paints. Here is what the verse says:

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
he rises to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!

What struck me is the line, "he rises to show you compassion."

I know God never sleeps, but when I get up at 5:09 every morning to start my day, I feel like I might be the only one awake in the world. When I come into a dark office building and turn on the lights at work, it feels like I'm the only one up. But in this verse we get the picture of God rising. He is awakening. He is getting up. And the question on His lips, the thought for the day is "How can I show compassion to Jon today? How can I be gracious to him?"

I feel heretical just typing that. That is too good to be true. As I scribbled that idea down in my five star notebook this morning I couldn't help but hear the voice of doubt repeating, "No way. No way. No way."

But maybe doubt is wrong this time. Maybe when verses like this say "the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion," I shouldn't read them as "sometimes the Lord longs to be gracious to you. If you're good, he might show you compassion."

Maybe, just maybe, this God of ours really does love us as much as He keeps trying to tell us.

When people shrink.

2008-12-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

People will make Jesus smaller than He is sometimes. Well meaning people that love you will downsize Him and what He's capable of in your life. They don't mean to, they're not being malicious, it just happens. And it happened in Mark 5.

Jesus was on the way to attend to the daughter of Jairus. She was sick and Jairus had pleaded with Jesus to come see her. On his way, Jesus got stopped by someone in the crowd and was delayed. Here is what happens in verse 35:

While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. "Your daughter is dead," they said. "Why bother the teacher any more?"

Do you see how they shrunk Jesus? In that moment, men that had presumably been watching over Jairus’ daughter while he was out recruiting the help of Jesus, came with a message. It was too late. Your daughter is dead. Why keep bothering this teacher.

They shrunk Jesus. They believed the situation had passed His abilities. They believed that the situation had grown larger than He could handle. It was over. How did Christ respond? Here's verse 36:

Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe."

Then He went to Jairus house and healed his daughter.

He refused to stay small. He refused to be limited by other people's expectations of what He was capable of and everyday, He asks us to do the same thing.

I don’t know what you’re going through right now, but Jesus is big enough for it. It is not too late. It is never passed His power.

So when someone tries to shrink Jesus, remember to just believe.

Who is carrying your mat?

2008-12-01T16:11:00.001-08:00

I’ve written about accountability before but haven’t spent much time on the topic of friendship. Until I read these verses in Mark 2. Here is what 3-4 says:

Some men came, bringing to him (Jesus) a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on.

I have to confess I’ve always missed the tenderness and strength of the friendship these four men showed the paralytic on the mat. First of all, they carried their friend to Jesus, with the hope that he would get healed. When they found the way blocked, they didn’t give up. They got on the roof, made an opening, spent an undetermined amount of time digging through it and then lowered him gently into Christ’s presence.

Is there a better picture of friendship than that? Going wildly out of your way to bring someone into Christ’s presence? Doing anything and everything you can, to connect someone hurting with the love of Christ?

Who is carrying your mat? Do you have four friends like that?

And perhaps more importantly, who’s mat are you carrying?

Four words.

2008-11-13T18:49:00.000-08:00

I have heard roughly 1 million pastors reference the verse, Philippians 4:6-7, in sermons about worry.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

And it makes complete sense, because it's a great verse. I've said that one over and over again through the years as I've wrestled with my own worries.

But I've never heard anyone mention the four words that come before it. I've never heard anyone talk about the incredibly short, but in my mind, incredibly powerful sentence that precedes, "Do not be anxious about anything."

Have you? If you're familiar with that verse and have memorized it before, do you know the way the verse before it concludes? I honestly didn’t until a few weeks ago.

The four words before Philippians 4:6 are "The Lord is near." The verses say, "The Lord is near. Do not be anxious ..." I love that. When we pray that verse out loud when we're under the burden of worry, when the skies are dark and we are so anxious we can barely stand and we cry out to God, I think we should start with "The Lord is near."

We're not praying to a far off God. We're not presenting our requests to a long distance lord. The Lord is near. The Lord is near. That's such a great reminder. Instead of starting with us, "Don't be anxious about anything," what if we started with the Lord? What if we started our pray with, "the lord is near" and ended it in verse 7 with “in Christ Jesus?” What if we had God bookends on that prayer about worry?

Would that change the way we thought about worry? It has for me.

Quiet

2008-11-06T18:48:00.000-08:00

Life is loud right now. The average person sees up to 5,000 marketing messages a day. That means that every week, someone is telling you something 35,000 times. Every month, you get offered 150,000 different messages, most of which are trying to sell you something that will improve your life. Every year, more than 1.8 million messages tell you how to be a better you with what they offer. And when we add our own internal soundtracks to that noise, things get really cluttered.

We tell ourselves we're not good enough. Or that we're fantastic. We inflate and deflate our own egos all day long with ideas and words and thoughts that bounce around our hearts and heads. Friends and family, coworkers and television, the internet and radio add to the conversation.

And life feels loud.

That's why I love Zephaniah 3:17:

The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.

The whole verse is great, but my favorite part might be the promise that God will "quiet you with his love."

I am in awe that the verse is not written:

God will quiet you by speaking louder than everything else.
God will quiet you with his knowledge
God will quiet you with his disappointment in you for allowing life to get so loud
God will quiet you with his anger.

It's love. God is going to quiet us with his love. And when he does, we'll be able to hear him singing over us.

Life is loud right now, and there are ways I can be deliberate and intentional about making it quieter. But the truth is, what I pray for the most, when things feel loud and out of control, is that God will quiet me with his love.

The gift of rescue.

2008-10-31T04:42:00.001-07:00

Have you ever read the book of Jeremiah? I did during the two years I spent doing a one year walk through the Bible, but recently I noticed a word I missed the first time.

In chapter 1:7-8, God is calling Jeremiah and says this to him:

But the LORD said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a child.' You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the LORD.

The word that stuck out to me was "rescue."

I've always read that verse like this:

"Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will help you."

I've always thought that a sign that you are doing God's work, that you have listened to His voice and made the right the decision is that things are peaceful and easy. God is there after all, shouldn’t that verse say, "Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will comfort you?"

But it doesn't that, it says "rescue." It reads like God is saying, "Look, you need to go do what I am asking you and it won’t be easy. I'm not calling you to safety and comfort, I'm asking you to go into a situation that's going to be dangerous and difficult. Where I am calling you will be so horrible that it will require rescue, but I will provide it. That's what I am going to give you, rescue. But in order to give you the gift of rescue, I need you to go somewhere that requires it and I'm going to be upfront, that won’t be fun. Because if it was, rescue wouldn’t be necessary and that's the gift I want to give you. So …."

I don't know where you are or what God's doing in your life right now but I do know this, if you want to receive the gift of rescue, which I think is one of God's favorite gifts to give us, you have to go somewhere and do something that requires it.

(If you read this post and think, "but I don't know what my call is!" read something I wrote called "Trying to find a cause." I promise you already have one and it's the most important one you can have.)

Just come.

2008-10-23T04:57:00.000-07:00

Somewhere along the way, I stepped away from the original intent of 97secondswithGod which was to express short, honest bursts of faith. And although I can't do the walk through the Bible chapter by chapter, day by day format right now, that doesn't mean I can't share what God is laying on my heart, as He lays it on there.

I don't know the frequency of what I'll write or what it will look like. I think it's going to be random and messy. But I want to share with you and want you to know I appreciate how many of you have expressed your appreciation for this site.

Below is what I wrote in my journal yesterday after reading Matthew 11: 28-30 and how I imagine God speaking that truth into my heart:

28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

I am not asking you to complete yourself and then come to me. I am asking you to come to me. Broken and burdened, infested with the most hideous lies about me and my nature. Covered in perpetual sin that you just can’t seem to shake. Because I don’t see that. I see Christ. I see the blood of my son all over you.

I know you think you need to work through your doubt before you come to me. But that’s not true. I can’t wait that long for you to come. And how ridiculous is that lie? That you have to figure me out, know me and trust in me without fail before you can come to me and get to know me. I do have gifts for you. Big crazy gifts, but the biggest of all is my presence.

That’s what I am inviting you into. My presence. That’s a gift I am inviting you into. My presence. That’s a gift I am going to give you every second for every hour of every day for the rest of eternity. Come to me. Come be in my presence. It’s so crazy to think you have to perfectly accept that gift before you can stand in that gift. I’m just saying, “Come stand in it. Bask in it.”

Come stand in it filthy and let me cleanse you.

Come stand in it broken and let me heal you.

Come stand in it drunk on doubt and fear and let me renew a spirit of confidence and trust in you.

Just come stand in it.

Come stand in it covered with lies and misconceptions about who I am and who you are and let me reveal the truth.

Come stand in it worried and stressed and trembling and let me cover you with a peace that transcends all understanding.

Come, just come.

Come stand in it with a past you can’t fix and a future you can’t look at without grimacing and I will comfort you in this very moment.

Come.

What happened to 97 seconds?

2008-10-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

I love this project. I feel incredibly blessed that people read this site and ask why did it stop. Right now though, in order to be faithful to some other projects God has brought into my path I need to take a sabbatical from 97secondswithgod.com.

Thanks for reading and sharing in this site and the other sites I write. I hope to return when the time is right.

Jon

Exodus 9 - Your Pharaoh

2008-09-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

Has anyone ever told you who you are? Has anyone ever handed you a label you didn't want and said, "here, wear this. This is who you are, this is who you will always be."

It's a frustrating experience. It makes you feel small and stuck, as if your story is already finished. As if someone else has already read to the end of your book and they are ready to tell you how it all turns out.

That's what Pharaoh tried to do to the Israelites in Exodus. He tried to tell them they were slaves. He tried to tell them who they were and give them a label that felt impossible to shake.

It had to be frustrating to be the Israelites in that moment. To be under the thumb of a ruler that refused to release them. To be suffering at the hand of a man that kept telling them, "you are slaves, you are slaves."

And maybe that's where you are right now. Some Pharaoh is making your life miserable. A boss, a parent, a friend, a family member, a stranger. Someone is trying to tell you who you are. To make you smaller and stuck. And in that moment it's tempting to cry out to God, "Why is this person in my life? God do you not see them? Do you not see what they are doing to me? Why?"

And in Exodus 9:16, I think God answers those questions:

"But I have raised you (Pharaoh) up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."

Maybe your Pharaoh is just a megaphone for God too. Maybe your Pharaoh is just a neon sign that ultimately, surprisingly, impossibly is going to point to God. Maybe that person that keeps trying to make you feel small is there so that God can show you how big He really is.

I'm not good at this, I don't have this idea down yet, but my hope is that the next a Pharaoh tries to tell me how small I am, my response will be "Whoa, this is going to be big."

Exodus 8 - Tomorrow

2008-08-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

I once heard a minister I dig named Troy speak on Exodus chapter 8. He keyed in on one word and I thought it was brilliant. The word? "Tomorrow."

That was Pharaoh's response when Moses told him:

"I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile."

Tomorrow, Pharaoh said. Sure, I see that my house and my land are flooded with frogs. I see that every flat surface is dripping with the sticky grossness of frogs. I know how miserable it is making me and my people, but I'll go ahead and take another night of that. Why don't you pray tomorrow Moses?

That is ridiculous, but not that unique. How often have I been presented with the end to a problem, with a clear exit to some sin I have entangled myself in but instead of saying, "yes, right now would be the perfect time to get rid of my frogs," I say, "one more night, one more weekend is all I need. After that, I'll be ready."

I don't know why we do that. Maybe tomorrow is easy and tonight feels impossible. Maybe tomorrow is seductive and far away and tonight is close and difficult. Maybe we think one last night will be enough of whatever it is that we don’t want to let go of. But it never is. Tomorrow is such a slippery time frame and it always shape shifts and stretches into next week, next month or next year if we take our eyes off it.

Maybe like so many other words, we need to retire "tomorrow" and give God today. Maybe it's time to kiss frogs goodbye.

Exodus 7 - Quiet

2008-08-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

It took me a few times to see what was missing in this chapter. I had to go back over the words and check all the sentences to see if what I was looking for wasn't really there. And it isn't.

Moses and Aaron don't speak at all in this chapter.

Did you notice that? They are never quoted. We never actually have their words laid out on the page or have a snippet of the conversation they have with Pharaoh framed for us to see. There was no need to include what Moses and Aaron said, because God was in control.

He lays out His plan. He gives them the exact words to say and the exact things He wants them to do. And then they do it.

I love the simplicity of this chapter, especially on the heels of chapter 6. They form such a perfect tag team of ideas that point to the same thing. We can be quiet. God's got this. Regardless of whatever particular type of "this" you're going for. He is in control.

Exodus 6 - It's not about me

2008-08-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

I love when God makes things simple. I love when He lays things all out and repeats Himself for my benefit. That's why Exodus 6 is so fun.

In the first eight verses, God uses the word "I" 18 times. He eliminates any possible questions about who is in control and just goes wild with establishing who this whole thing is about:

In verses 6 through 8 He says,

"I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.

And if that weren't enough, he uses the word "my" five times in the first eight verses. That means that God repeats the same message 23 different times.

It's about Him.

It's not about me.

I might try to wrestle control of my life from Him at times, but it's going to be Him that does it. Whether "it" is an exodus out of Egypt, a book deal, a move across the country or anything else that is on the horizon for anyone of us.

It's about Him.

Exodus 5 - The Desert

2008-08-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

I didn't make it passed the first verse of this chapter without getting stopped. Here is an excerpt of what Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh:

This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert.'

Isn't it interesting that the first thing God wanted His people to do was go into the desert to hold a festival for Him? I mean the desert isn't typically known as the best place to hold a festival. It's hot. It's desperately barren. It's the kind of place where people die if they get lost. So why did God want to hold a festival there?

I think it's because there aren't any distractions in the desert. It's quiet. It's empty. It's the kind of place where you can be still enough to actually hear God.

Sometimes, in our own lives, we find ourselves in the same place. We're alone and empty feeling and desperate. We're in the desert. And it's tempting to run. To see the desert as a bad place. As a place to flee from as fast as we can.

But maybe God wants us there for a reason. Maybe we're exactly where we need to be. Maybe God brought us there for a festival.

Exodus 4 - Confidence

2008-08-13T18:43:00.001-07:00

Today in Exodus 4 Moses lays out a pretty convincing case that he is not the man for the job God has in mind.

God turns his staff into a snake and then back to a staff. It is not enough for Moses.

God turns Moses' hand as white as snow with disease and then heals it. It is not enough for Moses.

God tells Moses He will turn the Nile water to blood as a sign. It is not enough for Moses.

Finally, in verse 10, Moses says to the Lord,

"O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue."

It's a good argument. After refusing to see God's power three times, Moses tries a different approach. Instead of doubting God's strength, he calls out his own weaknesses.

I love God's response:

The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."

I didn't understand this passage until last night. I was driving to my men's group and talking with God about my inability to do some of the things I feel like He is calling me to do. I said, "I feel like I've lost my confidence." In the space between seconds, I felt like God responded, "Good. Because it's not going to be your confidence that accomplishes anything. It's going to be me. Who needs your confidence? I am the God that created the universe!"

Moses continues to doubt in the chapter and God lovingly brings Aaron into the picture. Maybe that is what will happen with me. Maybe there will be some Aaron in my life, which could be great. Or maybe I will trust in God and not my own false sense of confidence. Either way God's got this whole thing and that's a really beautiful thing.

Exodus 3 - Fire and then feet

2008-08-12T19:46:00.000-07:00

The goal of this site is to provide, short bursts of God, 97 seconds where we get to ask questions and communicate about the beauty of who He is. I've failed at that by really stretching the definition of "short" and creating some long posts. That said, I'm going to try to do a better job at being brief. And here we go:

Did you ever notice that God doesn't speak to Moses until he takes a few steps toward the burning bush? In verse 3, after Moses sees the bush on fire it says:

"So Moses thought, 'I will go over and see this strange sight - why the bush does not burn up.'"

And verse 4 continues,

"When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, 'Moses! Moses!"

He had to take a step toward the bush before God spoke his name. He had to engage with the mystery in front of him before God would cry out to him.

I am often too afraid to take the first step. I often think the burning bush must take a step toward me, that mystery must be fully explained before I step forward. But this passage calls me out.

Mystery is waiting. The burning bushes are out there. The fire is only a few feet away.

Exodus 2 - Small Rescue

2008-08-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

The story of David and Goliath is often used to show how God prepares us for big challenges. In the story, it’s noted that David fought bears and lions before he faced Goliath. He won small battles before he faced the big ones. He was tested and tried long before he picked up the stone that would kill his tallest giant.

In Exodus chapter 2 we find a new example of this idea, one that I have always missed. (I feel like I should change the title of this site to “things I have missed” because that is inevitably what I end up writing about.)

In this chapter we get the origin of Moses, one of the most important people in Biblical history. We learn about how he escaped death as a baby by hiding in a basket that floated down the Nile. We hear about his amazing acceptance into the house of Pharaoh. We also see him make a critical mistake as he kills an Egyptian during a confrontation between an Israelite and an Egyptian. But every time I read this chapter I always skipped right over the verses that come after he’s been accused of murder. Here are verses 15-17:

When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.

Here’s Moses, a member of Pharaoh’s house, now on the run. He’s a murderer. Pharaoh wants to kill him. He is tired and afraid, resting himself by a well in Midian, his entire life in shambles. He sees a group of shepherds come along and drive the daughters of a priest away from the well.

I’d like to think I would have stepped in. That I would have jumped to my feet and fought off the shepherds, defending the honor of the daughters, but I’m not sure that’s true. I probably would have thought, “the last time I stepped into someone else’s problem, I ended up murdering them and becoming an outlaw. I’m staying out of this.” Not Moses, I love that the verse says, “but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.”

He got up off the ground. He picked himself up and came to their rescue. Not only did he chase the shepherds away, but he proceeded to water the daughters’ flock.

It seems like a small thing compared to the amazing things Moses will one day accomplish with God. But maybe it’s not. Maybe that small thing was preparation for the big thing. Maybe that tiny rescue was just a prelude to the massive rescue God was going to pull off using Moses.

Ultimately it serves as a really beautiful reminder of the need to do the small before the big. It’s especially interesting since the chapter ends with God hearing the groans of the enslaved Israelites. God doesn’t speak in this chapter, but if He did, you get the sense that He would say, “I hear you my dear Israelites. I hear your every groan. There is a storm coming. I will sweep you up and rescue you. You don’t know it yet, but even now I am watching the small rescues of my servant Moses. Soon. Soon.”

wedding

2008-08-07T03:00:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the slow down in posts. I'm at my little brother's wedding this week.

Exodus 2 will start back up on Monday.

Thanks so much for walking through Genesis with me. I look forward to Exodus.

Jon

Exodus 1 - Fast

2008-08-04T19:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life feels slow to me. It feels as if it plods along at a snail's pace. Get up. Shower. Commute to work. Sit in office. Commute home. Have dinner. Play with kids. Hang out with wife. Go to bed. Get up. Shower …

There is a deceptive rhythm to life that lulls me into complacency. A tiny voice inside that says, "You have all the time in the world. Things don't change quickly. Life is a drop of water crawling slowly down the beach, not a rogue wave that comes out of nowhere."

But in Exodus chapter 1 we see what a lie that thought is. In a matter of sentences, Joseph's family passes away. Joseph's generation passes away. The memory of Joseph passes away and suddenly in verse 8, "a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt."

Although it certainly took years and years, the transformation from freedom to slavery for Joseph's people is covered in less than 25 verses. They went from being guests in Egypt to being slaves in Egypt in what feels like a matter of minutes. Not only that, but Pharaoh orders every Israelite baby boy to be thrown in the Nile.

I guess I always missed how quickly that seems to happen. When I've read Exodus in the past I just took the seismic shift that occurred for the Israelites for granted. But reading it today I was struck by how swiftly these verses treat the transition.

Like much of what I read in the Bible, there are layers and layers of meaning in this chapter, but what I took away was pretty simple.

Circumstances can change in the blink of an eye. What you have today may be gone tomorrow, even if your tomorrow is twenty years away. We always act surprised when our babies are kids and our kids are teens and our teens are adults. It won't feel like two decades have crawled by. Even a whole generation of people loved by Joseph and the Pharaoh that knew him can vanish in the relentless march of time. And if I think that I have all the time in the world to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do, I've bought into the lie that life is slow.

But it isn't. Life is fast.

Genesis 50 - Forgotten

2008-08-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

"Forgive and forget"

I don't know who first paired those words, but after reading Genesis 50, I'd like to remix them a little. They've always meant that you forgive someone and you forget what they did to you. The two verbs in that idea are completed by the same individual. But in this chapter we see things in a different way.

Here is what 15-17 says after Joseph has buried his father Israel:

When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?" So they sent word to Joseph, saying, "Your father left these instructions before he died: 'This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.' Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father." When their message came to him, Joseph wept.

Joseph had already forgiven his brothers. He had already wept with them and held them and given them everything they could ever need for a new life in Egypt. He showered his family with love and protection. But as soon as Israel died, they grew afraid. They threw themselves down at his feet and said "we are your slaves." It was as if the forgiveness had never happened.

What was Joseph's immediate response? He wept.

There are probably a million reasons for those tears but it is interesting to wonder if he cried because he was sad that his brothers had forgotten his forgiveness. Maybe he was sad because their fear revealed that they were still living in captivity to the crime they committed decades ago. Maybe he was sad that they had not truly accepted his gift of forgiveness.

You see, instead of forgive and forget, the brothers were all living under the approach of "forgiven but forgotten." They had been forgiven, but they had forgotten it ever happened.

I wonder if God ever cries over me in the same way. He has forgiven me so many times. He sent His son to die for me. He holds me and whispers and shouts forgiveness to me. But I forget. When a single worry from the past tries to rear its head I don't squash it because I know I am forgiven. I give it room to grow and mutate and choke the happiness out of my life again because I have forgotten.

I am tired of living my life under the bondage of "forgiven but forgotten." I don't want to live like Joseph's brothers.

I just want to trust that I am forgiven.

Genesis 49 - We are lions

2008-07-30T18:15:00.000-07:00

We're coming to the end of Genesis with the last chapter unfolding tomorrow. Before we leave this book, I'd like to take one final look at Judah.

In chapter 38, Judah's sins and horrible decisions paint a clear contrast to the holy direction Joseph takes with his life. In chapter 43, Judah does the opposite of chapter 38 as he steps up and takes responsibility as his brothers cower in fear at the requests a strange Egyptian ruler, Joseph, is making on their family. It is a beautiful redemption story, but it is not complete.

In this chapter, 49, Israel blesses his sons. Some have brutal futures ahead of them because of their actions, Joseph has goodness awaiting him. And then there is Judah. What to do with Judah? Here is what Israel says:

"Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hand will be on the neck of your enemies; your father's sons will bow down to you.

You are a lion's cub, O Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness—who dares to rouse him?

The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.

He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch; he will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.

His eyes will be darker than wine, his teeth whiter than milk.

There is deep beauty in those verses but this is supposed to be 97 seconds so I will tell you one thing I think about the life of Judah:

Judah did not transform into another man, he became the man God always made him to be.

I used to those two things were the same, but they're not. Trying to become someone else is impossible and unfortunately what I used to do all the time. I thought that I was broken beyond repair and a different me was needed. If I could only figure out a way to be just like person B or person C, things would be fine. But that's not the way.

When I start becoming the person God made me to be, I get to be me. I get to find out who that is and what that means and learn to be content with the unique things that have always been true, though long hidden by my sin. I get to enjoy the thumbprint of my maker that has long lain dormant instead of trying to be someone else. There is tremendous freedom in that.

Judah didn't become a lion when he did the right thing in chapter 43. I think Israel calls him a lion's cub because that's what he always was. He might not have acted like that in chapter 38, but I think by this chapter, with God at the helm of Judah's life, Israel can't wait to exclaim, "who dares to rouse him?"

Genesis 48 - The soft X

2008-07-28T15:34:00.000-07:00

In chapter 48 of Genesis, one of the biggest lessons is that God makes decisions in ways we don't. This is reflected by the blessing Israel gives Joseph's youngest son. He should have placed his hand on Manasseh's head instead of placing it on Ephraim's head. But he didn't. He formed an X with his arms, doing the exact opposite of what Joseph and society expected.

That lesson is powerful and I think lots of people have written lots of great things explaining it. But that wasn't what stopped me in this chapter. What I took away was Israel's response when Joseph tried to fix the situation and make sure the right child got the first blessing. This is what Israel said in verse 19:

"I know, my son, I know."

I think that is so tender. I think that is such a soft thing to say to someone confused at what is happening. And I think it is what God must think when I try to uncross His hands in certain situations.

When I try to rush my book getting published or force a friendship or do a million different things my way and He has something else planned, He doesn't yell at me. He doesn't shake His head in disappointment. Not at all. He knows what I want. He knows what I think is important. He understands my deepest desire. Though like Israel, He refuses to do things my way, He doesn't act surprised at what I think should happen.

He says, "I know, my son, I know."

Sometimes that is all I get to hear. Sometimes those are the only words He unfolds in the midst of his soft X that is unmovable.

My prayer is that I'll learn to let that be enough. That I will trust that His way is better than my way, even when or perhaps especially when, it is different than my own.

Chapter 47 - The long lean

2008-07-25T17:38:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I wrote about the way Joseph showed such a wise understanding of cause and effect in this chapter. In Genesis 47 he laid out an interesting model of what it means to plan for and experience consequences. The clearest example being that he didn't just give the grain away to the people that needed it. He allowed them to learn the consequence of not planning during seven years of fruitfulness by charging them for their grain during the famine. But that's not what I want to talk about.

I'd like to highlight a handful of words at the very end of the chapter.

The scene is pretty simple. We're told, "When the time drew near for Israel to die, he called for his son Joseph." Israel is in the process of dying and calls his most trustworthy son forward to give him his last request. This doesn't necessarily feel like a death bed moment, but you definitely get the sense that Israel's body is making peace with the years that have piled up one after another like cars on the highway.

That reality is clearest with the sentence that ends the chapter, "And Israel worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff."

It's possible that it is meant to serve as simply a descriptive way to end the scene. But to me, there is more there. To me, it serves as a perfect example of when we should worship. Israel may not have been moments from death, but he was tired. For years he had mourned the supposed death of his son which is exhausting. For months he had feared losing Benjamin as the brothers went back and forth seeking grain from Egypt and a ruler they did not recognize. For days if not weeks, he had marched his family to Egypt, uprooting his life at a time when most of us would expect to be retired.

He is old.
He is feeble.
He is worshipping.

That is beautiful. In the midst of his tiredness. In the midst of his slow crawl toward the end of his chapter, he reserves the strength to do what matters most. He worshiped. Even "as he leaned on the top of his staff." Even as he discussed where he wanted to be buried. Even while he planned to die, he worshipped.

I want to live that sentence. I want to take it and make it mine. I want it to read, "And Jon worshipped as he wrote a blog. And Jon worshipped as he filled out his time sheet at work. And Jon worshipped as everything fell apart."

That is my new prayer. That is my new thought and I hope it's one that speaks to you too.

We will all have moments where we need to lean on our staffs. I pray that you'll remember:

"And Walt worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff."
"And Jennifer worshiped as she leaned on the top of her staff."
"And Amy worshiped as she leaned on the top of her staff."

Chapter 46 - Go before you know

2008-07-24T17:09:00.000-07:00

In Genesis 45, Joseph asked his long lost father to come to move to Egypt. This is no easy feat given the size of Jacob’s family. Plus he owned a ton of livestock and moving goats by foot has to be an unpleasant experience. In chapter 46: 1-4 it says:

“So Israel (Jacob) set out with all that was his and when he reached Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.

And God spoke to Israel in a vision at night and said, “Jacob! Jacob!” “

Here I am,” he replied.

“I am God, the God of your father,” he said. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again.”

Note the progression of events here. Jacob sets out with all his goats in verse 1 and then eventually in verse 4 God says "I will go down with Egypt with you.” Not the other way around. If I were Jacob I would have thought “That’s great to hear God because I’ve kind of already left.”

Jacob had to move his entire family, everything he had ever known to set out for a strange land with only his faith in his relationship with God to back him up. No detailed plans, no vision, no promise of success.

Why doesn’t God always give us an instructional sheet for the journey ahead? I think it’s because He’s brilliant and knows that if I had a sheet, that sheet would eventually become my god. When times got tough, I wouldn’t cry out to the one true God in confusion, I would look at my sheet and trust in it for clarity. I’d make an idol out of His instruction and put my faith in the piece of paper instead of Him.

I don’t know if you have a big goat move ahead of you, but if you do, don’t think that God isn’t with you just because He hasn’t delivered clear directions. His silence might be the greatest sign that He wants you take the first step long before He’ll tell you the next one after that.

Genesis 45 - Reveal

2008-07-23T09:52:00.001-07:00

In chapter 45 of Genesis the moment we have all been waiting for arrives, Joseph reveals to his brother's his true identity. It is exciting. It is happy. It is tearful.

But the thing I noticed while reading it was not the excitement so much as the overall patience Joseph showed. In this relatively short chapter he mentions his father four times. It is clear that a dam of emotion has burst and he is overwhelmed with the thought of seeing his father. So my question for you is this:

"Why didn't Joseph go see his father when he was put in charge of Egypt?"

Surely, as important as he was, he could have left for a few days/weeks to go see his father? Surely he had the power and the money and the pull? I mean when Pharaoh finds out about his brothers he goes crazy trying to treat them to the finest things that Egypt has to offer. Surely if Joseph told him about his father, Pharaoh would have made the reunion possible a lot sooner. Why didn't Joseph go to his father years earlier?

I don't think he did because he was committed to God's plan. He was dedicated to seeing it through to the end. He knew the completion of everything was not that his dire need of seeing his father again was met. He knew that God had him in place to save lives and save Egypt.

So even when it became possible to go see his father he knew that was not God's plan and stayed put.

It's an exciting chapter but the patience is what stopped me cold.

Genesis 44 - Forget

2008-07-22T04:40:00.000-07:00

Why did Joseph go through all the trouble of tricking his brothers in Egypt? Why place the silver cup in their sack and force them to leave Judah as hostage? Why all the games?

I admit, it adds to the drama. The tension is certainly higher with him making his brothers jump through hoops. We all collectively move to the edge of our seats when he unfolds his plan, but what was the point?

I think he wanted to see that his brothers were different. He didn't want to enable them and continue the cycle of generational sin he had broken only a few chapters earlier. He wanted to make sure his brothers had changed in action not just word.

Think again, about the family Joseph was from. What sort of consequences did Isaac place on Joseph's father Jacob when he stole Esau's birthright? What sort of consequences did Jacob in turn put on Judah when he tried to shirk the responsibility of the pregnant prostitute? What sort of consequences did Judah put on his own two sons for their evils that were so severe God killed them? None. You get the sense reading these chapters that this is a family that does not know the cause and effect of their actions.

But Joseph was different. He didn't scream "no" when Potiphar's wife tried to seduce him. He laid out his clear understanding of the entire situation to her, including the consequences. He spent years in jail as a product of false consequences. He interpreted the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker, with severely different consequences. And even more visible, he explained Pharoah's dream and did the opposite of what most men would have done. He stored food for seven years in preparation for the seven famine years. In chapter 47 we see that when people ran out of money to buy food, Joseph had them pay with their livestock and eventually their land. He didn't open the storehouses and just give the food to anyone that asked for free. He practiced cause and effect, action and consequence throughout his entire life.

To forgive his brothers instantly would have been the opposite of everything God had taught Joseph in his last twenty years. So when he saw the same brothers that had sold him into slavery, one has to wonder if he feared for Benjamin. Certainly he wanted to see the younger brother he had never met, but is it possible he feared they would do the same thing they did to Joseph to him someday? To sell the brothers grain without investigating would have been giving fuel to slave traders.

So he asked questions. He investigated, he made sure that his forgiveness would not harm the brothers. Which is a weird concept, but I think an important one to think about.

Genesis 43 - The long return

2008-07-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

In chapter 43, the tension with Joseph is building. His plan to study and forgive his brothers is unfolding and Benjamin arrives, breaking Joseph down into a private moment of weeping. But what's interesting to me happens before Benjamin shows up in Egypt.

Listen to the speech that Judah, the man that impregnated a prostitute and condemned her initially, says to his father in verses 8-9:

Then Judah said to Israel his father, "Send the boy along with me and we will go at once, so that we and you and our children may live and not die. I myself will guarantee his safety; you can hold me personally responsible for him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him here before you, I will bear the blame before you all my life."

That makes a nice paragraph but it is beautiful when you dissect it and see the words a man once known for shirking family responsibilities actually uses:

Send the boy along with me

We will go

I myself guarantee his safety

You can hold me personally responsible

If I do not bring him back

I will bear the blame before you all my life.

Judah, is that you? Can that be? Could that paragraph be more jam packed with words indicating a man of serious responsibility is about to step up to a dangerous situation?

I love it. I love that the Bible is full of mess ups that come back. Abject failures of human beings that through God's grace are pulled from the pit and do some tremendous things.

We are created to change. I don’t care if you're a bad dad, a fired employee, a divorced parent that feels like life is an island right now. Within you beats the song of change. It may be quiet right now. You might feel like it will never sing again, but just like Abraham, just like Judah, we are all capable of change in the eyes of the Lord.

Genesis 42 - Run

2008-07-20T02:08:00.000-07:00

I used to think that if I put enough time between me and something I had done wrong in the past, everything would be OK. Time would heal the wound, enough other memories would cover up the bad one I didn't want to deal with and everything would work itself out. I wonder if Joseph's brothers thought that too.

That was what struck me the most about chapter 42 of Genesis. There is a palpable sense of dread in the air. The sin of the brothers travels with them like a phantom, haunting their words and their actions. Even though they tried to escape it, it is so close to the surface in so many ways:

Jacob was living in fear - verse 4
But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph's brother, with the others, because he was afraid that harm might come to him.

The brothers can't tell their story without Joseph - verse 13
"Your servants were twelve brothers, the sons of one man, who lives in the land of Canaan. The youngest is now with our father, and one is no more."

The brothers sense punishment - verse 21
They said to one another, "Surely we are being punished because of our brother.

They remember the agonizing details of their decision - verse 21
"We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that's why this distress has come upon us."

The brothers are divided - verse 22
Reuben replied, "Didn't I tell you not to sin against the boy? But you wouldn't listen!"

Joseph is not a thing that happened, he is an intimate part of their past - verse 22
"Now we must give an accounting for his blood."

Everything comes back to that moment - verse 28
Their hearts sank and they turned to each other trembling and said, "What is this that God has done to us?"

Jacob keeps coming back to that moment - verse 36
"You have deprived me of my children. Joseph is no more and Simeon is no more, and now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is against me!"

The whole story revolves around the brothers' decision to sell Joseph into slavery. Although maybe they just needed more time to forget what they had done. Perhaps that was the problem. But it had been more than 20 years. They had emotionally and spiritually run for more than two decades. Do you think Reuben saw the young Joseph in his own sons? Do you think the brother's did not notice how that event ate at their father Jacob? Do you think they had a moment of peace in the last 20 years?

I doubt it. And maybe peace is what you need to. Maybe you need to stop running from that thing or that person. You might not have a younger brother to plead with. You might not have a situation that can be healed fully this side of heaven. But you do have a Father that cares, a God that is invested in your heart and a Lord that doesn't want to see you run for 20 years.

Chapter 41 - The Cycle

2008-07-19T02:23:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, my counselor Chuck asked my men's group a simple question:

"How did Joseph break the dysfunction that had hurt his family for generations?"

I honestly had never thought about that. I believed that from Abraham down to Joseph was a long line of pure holiness, but I was wrong.

Abraham lied and prostituted his wife. Not once, but twice. He doubted God's ability to provide a child so severely that he started another family with his maidservant Hagar. Isaac repeated the same mistake by whoring out his wife too. He also created a household where he had a favorite son and his wife had a different favorite son. He was not renamed by God. My friend Tim pointed that out. His father Abraham received a new name. His son Jacob did too, but not Isaac. Jacob and Esau were a mess, with Jacob stealing Esau's birthright and then using his family as a buffer against his brother's vengeance. Jacob then proceeds to repeat his father's mistake by creating a favorite son, Joseph.

One can only wonder what would have happened to Joseph if he had stayed in that environment. Have you ever met someone that is coddled and doted on and protected from every problem in the world? Have you ever met a spoiled child you admired? It is hard to believe that the third generation dysfunction of Isaac could have raised a new generation of holiness in Joseph. So what happened? How did Joseph turn out into an awe-inspiring man of God in charge of Egypt?

He suffered. He was sold into slavery. He spent years in a dungeon. He hit his bottom and found God waiting to lift him up. He was refined by the trials and tribulations of his life.

I do not like suffering. I do not like hard times or wish them upon anyone. I think God works through blessings and that going through suffering is not the answer to all of life's challenges. But in my 32 years, I cannot dismiss the clarity of God's voice when all other distractions are removed from my life in the middle of a crisis.

And though we're jumping ahead, I want to look at periods of pain like Job did in chapter 23: 9-10:

When he is at work in the north, I do not see him;
when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.
But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.

"How did Joseph break the dysfunction that had hurt his family for generations?"

He came forth as gold.

Genesis 40 - It's OK to not drown.

2008-07-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

I have friends that sometimes say, "I'll just wait and see what God does in this situation." I don't think that's inherently wrong. I think there are lots of times when God wants us to sit still. Where He wants to have us waiting for His rescue. But I also think it's easy to think that's the only way He works. I think it can be tempting to hide in the fact that He is going to do it and all we need to do is wait.

But Joseph didn't wait.

Have you ever noticed that? He campaigned for his exit by telling the baker and the cup bearer: But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison. For I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon."

Joseph made plans. He was proactive with his actions. He knew God would not strike him dead in the dungeon for trying to get out. He was not punished for making his case to baker and the cup bearer. It didn't work out initially, but I don't think that is the point.

I think the point is that if you're drowning, God is not going to criticize you for raising your own head above the water. Just as it is not a matter of my lack of trust in God for me to put up a gate at the top of the stairs to prevent my children from falling down. Could God prevent them from falling without the gate? Certainly. Could He heal them if they did? Without a doubt. Is He angry that I put up the gate. I don't think so.

Genesis 39 - The past comes present

2008-07-17T16:32:00.000-07:00

"I never saw that before" is a phrase I am getting used to saying. On all three sites I write, I keep tripping over things that I think must be obvious to other people. But for some reason I have not seen them. They have hidden in the weeds of life and I have missed them. Here's something I realized today.

Chapter 39 of Genesis is the section where Potiphar's wife tries to seduce Joseph. This is the section where Joseph ends up in jail. And when we get to chapter 41, I'll talk a little more about the purpose of jail, but there's something cool in this chapter too.

Here is an excerpt of what Joseph said to Potiphar's wife when she came on to him. He essentially lays out a case based on how much trust Potiphar has put in him:

"everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?"

I never realized that this, this is what Adam should have said to the serpent in the garden of Eden. This is the speech he should have given. These are almost the exact words, except perhaps we should switch out "house" for the word "garden" and "wife" for the word "fruit":

"everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this garden than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except this fruit, because this is his fruit. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?"

But Adam didn't say that. Joseph did. And though they were both kicked out of their homes, Adam the garden and Joseph Potiphar's house, they were headed in very different directions. Because for Joseph, an already crazy life was about to get crazier. And that's where we'll pick up in Chapter 40.

Genesis 38 - the question

2008-07-16T03:36:00.000-07:00

If we believe that the Bible is not accidental, that the words and pages and passages are not just a loosely scripted history of our faith, then we have to look at it differently. In addition to saying, "What does that verse mean?" we have to say, "Why was that verse there in the first place?"

Not even in a contextual way, but on a higher level, "Why was that included in the Bible" kind of way. And chapter 38 of Genesis is a perfect example of that. Let's remember what happened in chapter 37. When we last left Genesis, Joseph was being sold to the Egyptians. In a climatic moment, he was sold into slavery by his brothers and his father Jacob was mourning his reported death. It was intense and powerful and passionate.

But chapter 38 starts off slowly. Suddenly, like a soap opera jumping plot lines, we pick up with Judah and Tamar. Suddenly we leave the action behind and are thrust into the middle of a tale about family obligation and law. Sure, there is deception and intrigue and prostitution and mistaken identities, but it feels like it comes out of left field.

So instead of talking about the specific words in this chapter I want to talk about why it is here? Why did this tale about Judah's failure and unwillingness to follow the law by sleeping with and initially abandoning a pregnant prostitute, make it into the Bible? And why is it right here, sandwiched in the middle of the Joseph story?

My life application Bible says the story is meant to serve as a contrast between Joseph and Judah. For while Joseph is about to prove his mettle as a man of God, Judah is spiraling downward. While Joseph is about to raise high despite his circumstances as a slave, Judah is about to sink deep despite his circumstances as a son of Jacob.

It's a really powerful picture, the two different lives, and I think there is one thing I will take from this. And it's not that complicated although sometimes I wish it were. You see, in my life, if something is too complicated, I use that as an excuse to not do it. For instance, we have a phone service that receives all the messages on our home phone. You have to enter in all these passwords and codes and ID numbers to listen to the message. So in three years of having it, I have never once checked the messages. My wife does it for me because I always say, "that's so complicated. I don't want to bother with that."

The truth is that sometimes I do the same thing with the Bible. I try to make it complicated so I can ignore it like my home voice mails. But the truth is that sometimes it is simple. Sometimes it is obvious and clear and undeniable. I think chapter 38 of Genesis is an example of that. I think a really simple question emerges that we can ask ourselves everyday. It's the only thing I hope you take from this post and it goes like this:

"Today, do I want to be Joseph or Judah?"

Genesis 37 - the opposite of me

2008-07-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

I often like to think that when God gives you a blessing or a mission or in some way jumps down into your life, great things are about to happen. You are about to go on an adventure that will be exciting and fun and filled with happy God moments. But that’s not what happened to Joseph.

I once heard a minister say that one of the most dangerous times in our lives is right after God has spoken in to them. I think that is an interesting point that could be argued using chapter 37 of Genesis. Not to crack open any deep theological discussion, but look what happened to Joseph immediately after he had his dream.

In the first half of the chapter he has a dream in which his brothers bow down to him. After hearing the dream, they decide to either kill him or sell him into slavery. How can that be? I mean God just gave him a huge dream, a vision that was wild and amazing? How can the first step towards having people bow down be landing in slavery?

I want God to make sense, but He doesn’t. All too often, He seems to choose the exact opposite of what I would choose. It’s like He tells me to move to the ocean. So I buy bathing suits and a boat and a dock and I do everything I can to get ready for water. Then He says, “OK, you’re moving to the ocean, so the first thing I want you to do is go spend a few years in the desert. I want you to go a million miles away from the ocean.”

That doesn’t make sense. That is illogical. But I swear that is how God works. When Joseph had a dream of greatness, the first step was slavery. When Christ was called forward to save mankind during the baptism with John, the next thing he did was go spend 40 days alone. When you were called to get a new job, the next thing that happened was you got a promotion at your current one. When you were called into the ministry, instead of going to seminary God asked you to study Italian for a few years.

Sometimes we get the opposite of what we expect, like Joseph getting a shackle instead of a scepter. But when it comes to God, He always gives us what we need.

Genesis 36 - important

2008-07-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

My wife can't stand when I chew gum near her. Apparently, I am a very loud gum chewer. I am enthusiastic with my big league chew and hubba bubba. So if we are ever teasing each other, I know a great way to frustrate her is to chew some gum. Loudly.

We know each other well like that and so did Esau and his father Isaac. That is why the very second verse in chapter 36 is such a big deal. It's not complicated, the big things are often simple, but here is what it says:

"Esau took his wives from the women of Canaan: …"

The reason that is a big deal is that Isaac specifically and repeatedly warned about intermarrying. In fact, the very first thing he says to Jacob when he blesses him in chapter 28 is, "Do not marry a Canaanite woman."

And yet, that is the very first thing we learn about Esau in chapter 36. It's like he went out of his way to hurt his father. It's like he went out of his way to pick the sharpest knife to stab him with. The scary thing is, I'm not that different sometimes.

The reason why is that sin aims for the most important issues. It cuts deepest in the places God has gifted us deepest. It seeks out our most critical relationships like father and son, husband and wife, brother and brother, and tries to sever them.

Satan is not all knowing or all powerful or able to be everywhere at the same time. But he is very efficient out of necessity. He knows that he can do the greatest damage with the least possible effort if he strikes at something important. He won't try to spoil your talent for singing if you only do it in the shower. The minute you think about joining a praise team though, prepare for the arrival of doubt. He won't waste his limited energy on your broken relationship with your dad until you try to repair it.

What does that mean for you and me? It means that we have to protect the things that matter in this life. We have to guard our hearts and our relationships. We have to prayerfully deal with them and lean on God. Because ultimately, it's very easy for us all to become Isaac and Esau.

Genesis 35 - little gods

2008-07-13T11:01:00.001-07:00

I miss things in the Bible. I am constantly surprised at the things I do not see in the verses I read until someone points them out. But it's hard to miss how broken Abraham's family has become in Genesis 35. And yet God continues to both use and bless them.

The chapter opens up with God giving Jacob an instruction to build an altar to Him. That is a gift of a task, a chance to serve the Lord and carry out His direct order. But do you know what Jacob has to do first? He has to empty his house of false idols. Here is what Jacob says in verse 2, "Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes."

I feel like that sometimes. I feel like God has a task He wants me to do. He has a lot He wants me to accomplish for Him, but my house and my heart are too full of foreign gods. There is no room for Him or His work. I have my own mission and do not have the time or spiritual space in my heart for Him.

I wonder though, does God still work that way? Does He call us to do things that we can't really do when we've still got foreign gods in our eyes? Do we ever have to empty our own houses before we get to build an altar to Him?

Hard to say, but a few months ago something happened that makes me think maybe that's still the way God works. On a Monday, I emailed my counselor who I had not seen in over a year. I basically said, "I need to start seeing you again. This silly website I started has grown and I think I will become a jerk if I don't get grounded in the Lord." 24 hours after I sent that email, the first book publisher contacted me out of the blue.

Maybe that was coincidence. Maybe emailing my counselor wasn't an act of me cleaning up my house and my heart. Maybe the publisher's email had nothing to do with anything at all. But maybe, God still believes that we can't build His altar, we can't walk His road, we can't move in His direction, if we are still in love with foreign gods.

Genesis 34 - The snake

2008-07-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

Genesis is dropping some heavy truths right now and chapter 34 is no different.

I think that one of the tricky things about sin is that it permeates every aspect of our life naturally. For instance, when I am struggling with lust, I will physically gain weight. My performance at work will change. How I respond to simple issues at home changes. The sin in my heart is not contained to one area of my life. It naturally flows through every inch of my existence.

You see that truth here in this chapter. Shechem rapes Dinah, Jacob's daughter. That is a grievous, personal sin. He forced himself on her and acted out of lust. But sin is never satisfied with just having one area of our lives. So Shechem agrees to have himself and his entire town circumcised when Jacob's sons tell him that is the condition to marry Dinah.

That is a transactional mistake. That is a dumb decision but Shechem's thinking was corrupted by his lust. If you read the chapter you see that Shechem thought of the circumcision like a business deal. He told his town that they would get all the property of Jacob and circumcising themselves was worth that gain. At that point, the sin essentially entered his business world.

Jacob's sons then came and murdered the entire city, when all the men there were weakened from being recently circumcised.

Sin works that way. It's never just "this area of my life." It pollutes you entirely like a snakebite. Have you ever seen what they do when a poisonous snake bites your foot? They tie a rope tight around your leg. Why? Because venom travels. It might start on your toe, but in seconds it is in your bloodstream and then your leg and then your heart.

Sin is poison. If you know it's in one area of your life, please don't make the mistake of thinking it will stay there. I have in the past and it always cost me more than I expected to pay.

Genesis 33 - Inside the ring

2008-07-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

Much like most of the Bible, you can interpret this chapter two very different ways.

Some people see Jacob sending his family in front of him on the way to meet Esau as a sign of respect. That he was following protocol by sending the most important people in front of the crowd. I feel like that disagrees with the little I know about culture back then as far as how women were treated, but I could be completely wrong.

The second way to interpret this passage, the way I would like to, is that Jacob sent his family ahead to meet Esau because he was afraid. He was scared. It was a deceitful move, pure and simple. Just like so many other tricks he had played, living up to his namesake before God renamed him.

If we believe the idea that Jacob put his family first as a buffer against Esau, I think we reveal an interesting truth about fear and maybe even temptation. Here is my rather simple idea:

When it comes to temptation and fear, we will sacrifice anything to save ourselves.

By that I mean without God, nothing will stop us from acting out in sin. I have friends that will say things like "now that I'm married I won't look at porn" or "now that I am a father I won't work long hours." Or, "I'm afraid to tell my parents what I did, so I'll carry around the suffocating burden of this for years."

But that rarely ever works. The reason, which I have mentioned before, is that sin is like to massive monster waiting for you in a boxing ring. And when you lean on your wife or your kid instead of God, you are asking them to climb into the ring for you. You are saying to your toddler, "Daddy struggles with working too much and being emotionally vacant when he gets home, I need you to go fight that monster for me." Or you ask your wife, "I've developed an addiction I simply can't beat. Why don't you go inside that ring and fight for me."

Jacob gave up his family out of fear. Pastors give up their entire congregations to affairs. I gave up so much time with my kids when I worked long, long days. We will give up anything and none of it is ever enough to save us. None of the sacrifices we make change the end of the story.

God is the only thing that can win in that ring. I promise.

Genesis 32 - why I wrestle

2008-07-10T17:08:00.000-07:00

I love my counselor. I know that sometimes, particularly in Christian circles, counselors get bad raps. And it's true, there are some bogus counselors out there. Just like there are bogus accountants, bogus mechanics and bogus every other profession.

But my counselor is prone to saying small things that rock my world in a big way.

About a year ago, I confessed some frustration I was having with God. I just felt like I was struggling with Him, like we were pushing each other around and battling over a few issues. My counselor listened and then said,

"God loves that."

This is not the answer I was expecting. I thought he would say, "You need to trust the Lord more." Or "You need to let go and let God." But he didn't say that. He said that God loves when I wrestle with Him. I of course asked why.

"Jon, do you know what is true about wrestling? Have you ever stopped to think about the nature of wrestling? God loves to wrestle with us, because you can't wrestle with someone that is far away. They have to be close to you. It's a very intimate, personal activity."

And I think he was right. I think that God wants me close. I think He wants me near to His side, close enough to feel His breath and know His strength. And when I approach to wrestle over an issue with Him, like Jacob wrestling, I don't think He is angry. I think He is happy, because I am close.

Genesis 31 - Island

2008-07-09T16:26:00.000-07:00

Sin is never an island.

I wish it were. I wish that it was easy to isolate sin like finding a single leak in a dam. Having patched it, we could walk away confident that everything was under control.

I used to think that. I used to believe that if I got my biggest issue under control, everything else would be fine. But over the years I have realized how wrong that is. If I run with the dam analogy, then sin is a rushing river. When I patch one hole or fix one weak spot, it starts to look for another. It pushes and pulls at our lives until another weakness is revealed.

For me, that meant when I got my lust under control, my work addictions went crazy. Suddenly, I started looking for the same sense of control, false of course, that lust had given me, but in a different way. I didn't fix anything, my sin just continued inside my life to a different place. When I focused on fixing work, it flowed to my relationship with my wife. When we worked on things together it moved on to some childhood stuff I needed to deal with. It just kept going and going and going.

That was what Chapter 31 of Genesis felt like tonight. It's just a train wreck. Jacob is fleeing Laban by lying to him. He is stealing away under false pretenses. Meanwhile, Rachel adds to the sin parade by stealing Laban's idols. She then lies about having them, when Laban chases them down. The lives in this story are so tied together in sin and failure.

The chapter feels like an episode of the show "Cops." Just one sin after another, flowing from life to life to life.

Sin is not a circle. It is a figure eight. When you think you've stopped it, when you think you've dammed it, it flows to another part of the figure eight. And if you're like me, sin is actually a big ball of yarn, with a thousand entries and tangles and pathways, woven together so tightly they choke. And without God they only get more knotted.

Things are going to come unraveled in this story soon. God is about to do some cool stuff that I can't wait to write about from these chapters. But until then, remember something simple. Sin is never an island. It always travels with friends.

Genesis 30 - The Mandrake Soap Opera

2008-07-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

Chapter 30 of Genesis is like a soap opera. Everyone is sleeping with each other, cheating each other out of sheep, repeating the mistakes of their parents, bartering sex for mandrakes. The whole thing is a mess.

And I think that mess has probably been discussed a million different times by a million different writers. But I am a big fan of the "edge verses," those little lessons that we miss because they are hidden on the edges of neon stories. Like the ones in this chapter. So instead of focusing on all the action, I want to write about six words Rachel says in verse 1. What are they? They are actually very simple:

"Give me children, or I'll die."

This is such a perfect picture of jealousy and envy. In the first half of the sentence she makes a demand. She orders Jacob to give her children. But the reality is that Jacob is not a God. He cannot simply give her children, a fact he points out by saying "Am I in the place of God?" The problem, is that's how jealousy works. It makes our object of desire impossible. It makes what we want and our attempts to get it impossible. Had she asked God, at the bare minimum Rachel
would have been asking someone capable of fulfilling the command. But Jacob can't.

I see this in marriages sometimes and to some degree, this is Hollywood's fault. We've bought into the Jerry McGuire idea of thinking our husbands and wives "complete us." They don't. They can't. They won't. And when you put that kind of pressure on them, you cripple them. Your wife can inspire you, challenge you, encourage you, warm your heart, but only God can complete you. Only God can do the seemingly impossible, whether that's giving you children or giving you self esteem and making you whole.

In the second half of the sentence Rachel lays out an extreme consequence of what will happen if her demand is not met. She will die. She throws the die card. Not that she will be unhappy or sad or unfulfilled, she will die. I know that feeling. There are things in my own life that I struggle with when it comes to envy. Authors or young pastors I am jealous of. There are other blogs I wish I could be like. I wrestle with my own sense of jealousy and desperate demands and ugly envy.

I wish I didn't. I wish that most of these chapters in Genesis did not apply so directly to my own life, but they do. My challenge to you is that the next time you find yourself making a demand of what you need, or a consequence of what will happen if you don't get it, remember Rachel.

Genesis 29 - The safety of wait

2008-07-07T04:53:00.001-07:00

The first time I asked my potential father-in law if I could marry his daughter he said no.

The second time I asked him, he also said no.

I was disappointed to say the least, but looking back on it now, I realize he wasn't trying to say no, he was trying to say "wait." He knew his daughter was special and wanted me to take the time to see that too. He knew I was just some fresh mouthed kid with a really small understanding of love and marriage and life. He wanted me to grow up a little, to learn how to love his daughter not leap into loving his daughter.

But I didn't want to wait.

So we got married on my time frame and in some ways, going fast ended up really slowing us down. By speeding into marriage, we had to figure out some things in the first few years that other people figure out before they get married. We had to work through issues that we could have discussed prior to marriage. We had to, in some ways, pay the consequences of rushing.

I bring this up because in chapter 29, Jacob worked for 14 years to marry Rachel. Wow, I don't think I waited 14 days to propose to my wife after my father-in law said wait. Other than breathe, there are not many things I have done for 14 years straight. That is such a long time.

The marriage rush is over. My current wait or run or what do you want me to do God issue is publishing a book. I want it to happen right this second but maybe God is protecting me from it like my father-in law tried to protect me from the cost of rushing at marriage. Success can be one of the most dangerous poisons of all. Maybe God's hand is staying the cup even as I struggle to bring it to my lips.

My prayer today is that we'd all wait. In the right ways for the right reasons. And that when it is time to run, we will be ready.

Genesis 28 - Still

2008-07-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

(I'm back from a short wedding filled trip to North Carolina. Let's pick up where we left off in chapter 28.)

Has God lost a step?

Does He still have His A game?

Is He still as sharp and as skilled at being God as He used to be?

I raised those questions on stuff christians like one day and I think they still need to be raised. Why? Because sometimes I act like He's not as powerful as He used to be. And this chapter is a perfect example of what I mean.

In chapter 28, God speaks to Jacob through a dream. While asleep, he dreams about a staircase and God speaks truth to him. Dream messages are actually not that unusual in the Bible. Joseph gets several messages when Jesus was being born and it's easy to go back through the Bible and find several other examples. But what if your friend told you God had done the same thing to them last night? What would you think?

I confess, I'd think that was a little weird. I would have a hard time believing them. And the reason is that sometimes my God is pretty tame. I mean He only really uses the Bible and maybe sometimes people to speak to me. A dream? A sunset? A nightmare? A song? That's iffy at best.

But maybe God hasn't changed. Maybe that's part of what it means for Him to be unchangeable. Maybe deep in sleep is a land He still wants to rule. Maybe last night's dream was actually this day's challenge.

In the last six months, I've had two nightmares that shook me up in a spiritual way. Was it just that I ate something weird before bed? Has God vacated the dreams we have? Hard to say, but if God is unchangeable, then maybe, just like Jacob, we need to admit He gets to choose the way He speaks, even if we're not awake.

Genesis 27 - I Jacob

2008-07-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

Just as it was tempting to judge Esau, it is equally tempting to cast an eye of anger toward Jacob. What a dysfunctional family we see on display. In chapter 27, Jacob tricks his father out of the blessing he intended to give Esau. He lies and cheats until he gets what he wants.

How does he pretend to be his brother? Primarily by dressing up as him in skins that mimic Esau's hairy arms. I want to judge Jacob, I do, but I've done the same thing in my own life.

Sometimes when faced with a challenge, I will wear a mask instead of doing the work of actually becoming what I want to be. The best example of this is perhaps the first few years of my marriage. My wife and I never had a disagreement for the first five years we are married. Before you clap at our ability to get along, let me say this was not a product of us doing well. It was a product of us being fake.

Two, strong, alive inside, people are bound to disagree. That is OK. That is healthy and honest and real. But we both thought that being a good Christian couple meant never arguing. So instead of investing in the hard work of being intimate and real with our feelings, we put on the mask of "happiness." We concealed our hopes and dreams in order to steal from each other the concept of a "good marriage."

It didn't work. The real stuff just festered. It just boiled over inside because no matter how many "good husband" masks I wore, I was the same unchanged person. And just like Jacob had to flee when his deception was revealed, we emotionally fled each other and our relationship suffered.

Things are different now. We don't wear masks or animal skins like Jacob. We argue. We disagree. We engage about the things we really care about. Is our marriage perfect? Not by a long shot, but it is real. And that's something I am really happy about.

Genesis 26 - Soon

2008-07-03T02:11:00.000-07:00

I go to counseling. Right now, I see counselor #3, a guy named Chuck. He is like this crazy six foot four motorcycle riding dude with a huge tattoo that has the word "life" in a dozen different languages. And a few weeks ago, he dropped a scriptural bomb on me. Just some ridiculously cool knowledge.

And in a few days, when we get to the point in Genesis that he told me about, I hope to drop it on you too. But to do that, I need to set it up a little. I need to reflect a tiny bit on Isaac.

The thing that strikes me about this chapter is that Isaac repeats the same exact sin that his father Abraham did. Abraham lied and said Sarah was his sister. Isaac lies and says that Rebekah is his sister. It is such a clear portrayal of generational sin.

I know I have written about how important it is to understand your family of origin. How critical it is to know what you learned from your mom and dad. But I do agree with the doubters. I don't think looking at your childhood should be a way for you to blame your present mistakes on things in your past. My father didn't make me choose the wrong things as a 32 year old. He might have impacted my decision making process as a child, but the responsibility for what I do is mine.

So what I don't want to miss in this chapter is the exact replica Isaac becomes of Abraham in his lying. I sometimes do that. I read something in the Bible and think it is in there "just because." Not that I need to learn from it but that it's just filler, stuff to move the story along. But I don't really think the Bible is accidental. I think regardless of how big or small, every passage has a purpose. I think the purpose of this one is to teach us something that is true of most humans. We tend to repeat what we do not take the time to understand.

Genesis 25 - Easy 300

2008-07-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

It's easy when you read chapter 25 to judge Esau. I mean he was dumb. He gave away his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of red stew. Granted, Jacob was deceptive, but still, it's a big mistake to make. It was a stupid thing to trade. But we do it all the time.

A few months ago, I was talking to a married friend. He said he was struggling with being flirty with girls at his gym. He really felt like for him, being a member of a health club was impeding his walk the Lord as it regularly stirred up such strong feelings of lust. When I suggested he quit the gym and either buy a treadmill or run outside, he looked at me like I was crazy.

He didn't want to give up his gym membership. He didn't want to make that sacrifice. When faced with his freedom in Christ or a fun place to exercise, he choose the gym.

Sometimes life is black and white like that. We like to think we are not choosing something other than God, but we are. For me, it was the movie "300." I read that it had nudity in it. I have often said that lust is an issue for me. For me to choose to see that movie was to choose against God. He and I had a clear understanding about things like that. I was just like Esau, faced with what should have been an obvious decision. Watch 300 and add fuel to the lust fire, or skip the movie and focus on the things God has called me to.

Our faith doesn't disappear when we choose the wrong thing. We might not lose our birthright, but we do have to make a choice. And sometimes we choose the small, temporary things because we are hungry for a cup of stew when the big, beautiful, long term things are right in front of us too.

Just like Esau.

Genesis 24 - Stride

2008-07-01T05:02:00.000-07:00

Right now, the biggest hole in my life, is that I don't have a mentor. I don't have an older, wiser person helping me make some of the weird decisions I am starting to face. Like writing a book, speaking at churches, consulting ministry organizations etc. And I think in general, it's hard sometimes to find that person.

I think it's a challenge because some times people give us counsel that is more about them and less about us. Although it might be cloaked in words that feel as if they are meant for us, if we step back, we can see it's really all about them.

That's why I like the way Abraham's chief servant handled Laban's request to stay longer than he should. The servant had a mission. He was laser focused on fulfilling God's command so when Laban tried to delay him, he said without hesitation: "Do not detain me, now that the Lord has granted me success to my journey. Send me on my way so I may go to my master."

I love that, the directness of it, the clarity of it and I need to learn from that. What I need to learn too is that often, when someone tries to detain you, there are three possible inappropriate reasons they are slowing you down:

1. They are afraid you will leave them behind as you journey outward.
2. They once had the same vision or passion as you and regret that they never fulfilled it and thus want company in their misery.
3. They are currently ignoring their own calling and your obedience is uncomfortably highlighting their disobedience.

I agree, sometimes a delay is exactly what you need to hear. I want to publish a book right this minute and my wife has been beautiful in speaking "slow down" into my life. And I am praying for a mentor. I am hoping that God will helicopter in some author or speaker that has walked this same road. But in the meantime, I am being cautious with the advice I receive because I want to be focused. I don't want to be detained for the wrong reasons. I want to go to my master.

Genesis 23 - To be a prince

2008-06-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

At first glance, this is one of those chapters that does not have a tremendous amount of action in it. There's no ark or tower of babble or angels smiting people. This is not exactly a blockbuster chapter, but there is an idea that caused me to pause in verses 3-6.

After Sarah died, Abraham needs to bury her. It says that he approached the Hittites and told them "I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead."

The Hittites respond by saying, "Sir, listen to us. You are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead." I missed it the first few times I read it, but there's a pretty powerful concept hidden in there.

I'm talking about the sentence "You are a mighty prince among us." That struck me because I don't live my life that way when I find myself surrounded by Hittites. The best example is the one I am living right now.

I want to write a book and start a ministry. I want to speak to churches and college groups around the world. Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't. But regardless of the future, today I am working a full time job in advertising. I have a boss and coworkers and colleagues and responsibilities.

Right now, it is easy to be over focused on the book. Right now it is tempting to shrug off my real responsibilities for the fun stuff, writing and interacting with readers. But right now, I am living amongst the Hittites. And if I were ever to leave, what legacy would I have created? Would my boss stand up and say "You are a mighty prince among us?" Would my coworkers feel I had been kind and reflected the light of Christ in the workplace were I ever to leave? Would I be offered the choicest tombs based on my behavior?

All too often it is easy to get hypnotized by the future we think God might give us. Going to seminary, starting a ministry, doing something "big and amazing" for Him. But the reality is, we all live amongst the Hittites. In different ways, we all have the chance to leave an impact in the now. And that is what this chapter said to me.

Simply put, every day we have the chance to be a prince.

Genesis 22 - We change.

2008-06-29T03:00:00.000-07:00

The things I struggle with most are not usually external. I rarely have to grapple with an opponent in my driveway on the way to work. In most situations, I am at the top of the food chain and do not have to fear tiger, crocodile or wolverine attack. My career is not all that dependent on the weather. External challenges, although present at times, are not what holds me back. It's the internal I struggle with most.

The thoughts of inadequacy. The feelings of doubt or shame or frustration. It's mindsets that I often wage battle with. Internal beliefs that hold me back from experiencing the true freedom of Christ. Quiet lies on the inside that say I'm not good enough or that God's forgiveness has a limit. And sometimes when I lose against these thoughts for the thousandth time, I wonder if I will ever change. Is that even possible?

Genesis chapter 22 says it is.

This is the chapter in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. This was not the first time we have seen God say something crazy to Abraham. In chapter 15 He promised him an incredible future. And when he did, Abraham expressed some doubt.

At one point in that chapter, when told he would possess the land, Abraham asked, "O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?"

He had questions, doubts, internal battles he was losing when God spoke to him. But do you know what Abraham asked in chapter 22 when God told him to kill Isaac? Nothing.

He didn't say a word. He got a knife. He got his son. He got moving.

That is a dramatic change in character worth noting. As recent as chapter 16, Abraham was not trusting in God to provide and was instead going along with his wife's plan and sleeping with Hagar to extend the family line. So how is he so different in this chapter? How when God promises him something good in chapter 15 does he show doubt, but when God asks him to do something horrible in chapter 22 he says "here I am" and "God will provide?" What changed Abraham?

God did. He is the only one that can ultimately sustain life long change. I've changed a million things in my life temporarily, but the things I really struggle with, the big, gross struggles, those are so slippery when I try to do it myself. They just take a different shape. When I try to fix lust by myself, I just start working too much. When I try to not be a workaholic, I start finding other ways for approval or affirmation. When I get my approval issues under control, my feeling of inadequacy shape shifts back into lust and nothing really changes.

But Abraham did, in a big way. And God doesn't change, so it's not crazy to think that the same attitude change, the same heart transformation that Abraham experienced, is possible for me and it is possible for you.

You might think you'll never be a good dad or love your husband the way you should or be comfortable being single for the rest of your life, but people change. Or rather, God changes people and as difficult as that is to believe sometimes, it's true.

Genesis 21 - Invisible

2008-06-28T04:09:00.000-07:00

There is an accidental theme starting to emerge from some of these Genesis posts. A consistent thread of an idea that I promise I am not deliberately weaving. And I think it is this:

You are not invisible to God.

God sees you. He hears you. He knows what is important to you and what is a struggle right now. You are on His radar. This is a message that comes across in chapter 15, chapter 16, chapter 18 and today, chapter 21.

In this one, Hagar and her son have been thrown into the desert but Abraham. His wife was too jealous to have them live in the same household. Hagar, believing her boy will die, is too devastated to watch his demise and leaves him off by himself. And then in verse 17 we see the five words that change the story:

"God heard the boy crying,"

There are perhaps bigger things that happens in this chapter. Words and promises that shape history in ways that might be more important than this half of a sentence. But, I think there is great hope hidden in this idea.

A boy had become invisible. He was expelled from his father's house. He was left alone in the wilderness to die. He was no one, about to die a no one's death. And yet God heard the boy crying.

You have probably not been in this exact situation, alone in the desert, waiting for inevitable death. But you have lost something. There is something in your life that you feel is invisible to God. Maybe it's a dream, a career that pulls at your heart but you are convinced God doesn't see. Maybe it is a lost relationship that left scars you know won't heal on their own but you think don't matter to God.

It could be anything, but I don't think that is the point. The point is that God still hears boys and girls crying. He still listens. He still acts. Regardless of how big or how small your desert is.

You are not invisible to God.

Genesis 20 - Besides

2008-06-27T05:18:00.000-07:00

Abraham said some big lies. In Genesis 20 we're told that because he lied about his relationship with his wife, God had closed up the wombs of every woman in Abimelech's household. I've lied before, lots even, but I'm not sure that has ever happened.

What's weird about the whole event is that when it comes out, when Abimelech confronts Abraham, we witness one of the greatest tools that liars ever use. I am of course talking about the word "besides."

This is such a dangerous word because it starts to break down our resolve and represents the point when our beliefs weaken. And it's so easy to use:

"Sure, I talk with that guy at work a lot, but that's OK. Besides, my husband doesn't have the same passion for music that I do."

"I know I shouldn't have taken credit for that project at work, but it’s not a big deal. Besides, that's just something that happens in the corporate world."

"Yes, they were expensive, but I really like them. Besides, I deserve something nice, it's been a really tough week."

Besides is so insidious because it comes wrapped in the cloak of truth. Technically speaking Abraham was right. But the technicality of what he did wasn't what was in question. What he did was and it was clear that God was not looking to discuss technicalities.

Besides is like a tiny black drop in a white bucket of paint. It doesn't change the whole bucket into night sky darkness, but it blurs the color. It softens the crispness of the white into a grey. It makes the issue at hand feel fuzzy and up for discussion and debate.

This weekend, watch out for the word besides. It's cheap to use but usually, like the women in Abimelech's household would tell you, costs you much more than you expected.

Genesis 19 - Jokes

2008-06-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

The last few chapters of Genesis have been thick with events and experiences. Angels predicting births, wives plotting, men sleeping with maid servants and this chapter is no different. But rather than the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or Lot's mistakes, I wanted to briefly touch on nine words that hit close to home in this story.

After the angels at Lot's house had blinded all the sex hungry men beating down the door, they turn to Lot and say, "Get them (anyone in Lot's family) out of here, because we are going to destroy this place." You get the sense that something powerful is about to happen and there is a tension that settles over the scene as Lot goes to speak to his family.

When he finds his future son-in-laws, he tells them, "Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city!" He yells at them. He pleads with them. Their response?

"But his sons-in-law thought he was joking."

They interpreted a warning as a joke. They laughed when they should have left. They dismissed when they should have disappeared. They died of disbelief that day.

I don't face situations that are so clearly dangerous. My potential downfall is not so neon. That I am aware of, sulfur curtains are not about to close on Atlanta where I live. But I need to treat more things as dangerous in my life. I need to see less jokes in my actions and the actions of those around me.

My favorite example is when someone will tell me, "I just have a flirty personality." I get that. Believe me I do. I tend to be gregarious and feel energized by crowds and love meeting new people. But as things kind of progress with the book and speaking engagements, how I interact with people not named "my wife" is an area I have to be hyper careful about. Because if I'm not, I'm Lot's son-in-law, standing on a stone-covered town square laughing at a warning while death and destruction quietly amass at my doorstep.

Genesis 18 - The death of monologue

2008-06-25T04:16:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, Genesis 18 is one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible. For some reason, I find the interchange between the Lord and Sarah very humorous. In verses 13-15 it almost feels like the Lord is being witty. When He hears Sarah laugh, He asks why she did that. She lies and says she didn't. His immediate response is, "Yes, you did laugh." For reasons I can't explain, that sounds like a scene from an episode of the show Frasier or something to me. I just picture God sitting back and saying, "Oh, you laughed. You laughed."

But the real cause for my deep affection for this chapter is that for me it marks the death of monologue and the birth of dialogue. The idea that we serve a God that speaks but does not listen, a God that gives words but does not receive them, a God that dictates but does not discuss, is laid to rest.

For when Abraham and God discuss the fate of Sodom, it's not simply a one way street. It's not that God is a four star General barking out commands to Abraham. Not at all. In this passage, He is listening. More than that, He gives Abraham freedom. Did you see what Abraham did? He kind of pulled a Blockbuster on God. (Yesterday on SCL I wrote that Blockbuster changed my service plan from infinite movies a month to 2 movies a month.) Abraham did something similar.

He placed a number in the conversation. God essentially said everyone is going to die. Abraham however changed "everyone" to "no one" if 50 righteous people could be found. That's gigantic. And then he eventually worked down to only 10 people being needed to save the city.

Some times we pray things like "just give me the strength to handle whatever it is that you throw at me Lord." That is a monologue prayer, as we are expecting to receive a monologue from God. I think God likes dialogue. I think this example shows His ridiculous flexibility in some situations. Why else is this passage in the Bible? I mean Sodom still fell. The result was still the same, but I think we're supposed to learn from and trust in the conversation Abraham had with God.

I think we're supposed to dialogue.

Genesis 17 - The limits

2008-06-24T04:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I got a very positive email from my literary agent about some of the publishing things we're trying to figure out. It was the kind of email that writers dream about getting, but when I spoke to my wife, she felt I was "reverse jinxing" it. I need to do another post on the topic, but a reverse jinx is basically where you pretend you think the opposite is going to happen in order to make what you really want happen. For instance, if your team has one chance to score a free throw to win a basketball game, you will verbally say, "Oh this guy always misses free throws." You don't want to jinx the situation by saying, "This guy is great at free throws," so you reverse it while secretly hoping he makes it.

But in addition to my reliance on the "reverse jinx," that experience also revealed that I am like Abram. I have limits on what I think God is capable of. Has He saved my marriage? Yes. Has He blessed me in more ways than I can understand? Yes. Has He put words in my heart over and over again? Yes. Is He capable of getting me published? Uhhh, that's up for debate.

The same thing happened with Abram in Genesis 17. When God appears, we are told that Abram fell face down. He understood that this was God. He did not question the things God had done or would do. When God says, "I will make nations of you," Abram doesn't doubt that. In fact, at the end of the chapter, Abram believes so fervently that he goes off and has every male in his house circumcised. Talk about a tough thing to sell to your landscapers.

But when confronted with the idea that he and his elderly wife would have a kid, Abram laughed out loud. He laughed at God's plan and then he suggested an alternative. "If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!"

That was Abram's limit. God had reached it. He didn't think old people could have babies. Pretty simple, clearly defined limit to what God can do. Make nations out of me? Yes. Have me circumcise every male in my house? Yes. Change my name during a conversation with you, the Alpha and Omega? Yes. Get me and my wife pregnant? Doubtful.

On some level, we all put limits on what God is capable of. We all have specific issues that we think he might need us to suggest an "Ishmael solution" for. So that, becomes the question for today.

I have to give God the publishing of my book. What limit do you have to let go of?

Genesis 16 - Out of sight

2008-06-23T03:52:00.000-07:00

The neon topic to discuss when it comes to Genesis 16 is what happens when we take things into our own hands. In the story of Sarai, Abram's wife, we see someone desperate set into motion a desperate series of events. In verse 2 she does the classic "Lord/I" scenario. She says "The Lord has kept me from having children." Then she follows it up with "Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."

In the first sentence she lays out what God has done. In the second sentence she lays out what she was going to do to fix God's mistake. To succeed where He had failed. But that's not what I want to talk about today.

What I find really interesting is what Hagar says in verse 13. She says, "You are the God who sees me." We are told that "She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her."

What I think is cool about that is in essence, Hagar summarized what she believed about God with a name. At a time in her life when she must have been feeling invisible. After all, despite being with child, she was pushed out of the house and had run away alone. Was she hurt that Abram was acting like she didn't exist? When we read the story it's easy to brush aside the fact that the two of them had been doing something incredibly initimate. They had created a child together. Was she sad from the isolation Sarai certainly thrust on her with her anger? Did she know who she was or where she and her child could possibly go?

She had no identity. She was a maidservant who had temporarily been more but was now back to nothing. But in the midst of that, she is told, "You are now with child and you will have a son." God knew her condition. He was well aware of what was going on in her life. More than that, she is told, "for the Lord has heard of your misery."

Do you ever feel disconnected from God? Like the line has been cut? That your call has been dropped? That He is unaware of your life and your struggles and your joys and the things that matter most to you? That He doesn't see you?

He does. He has heard of your misery. He knows your dreams and your hopes, the ones still alive, the ones that seem to have been suffocated by the weight of time and inaction. He is watching with anticipation and with love. You are not invisible. I promise you, you are not hidden.

He is the God who sees you.

Genesis 15 - The darkest light

2008-06-22T03:26:00.001-07:00

This chapter has a few really interesting moments in it. The first is that Abram talks back to God. They actually dialog, with Abram expressing honest doubt. It's not that God says something and Abram instantly replies, "You got it. I'm super happy thanks! Rainbows and ponies!"

Not at all, he actually discusses his future with God and details what he fears about the days ahead. This kind of changes the game. This changes how we can interact with God. This makes faith a two way street. A conversation, not a hand off of rules and ideas.

The second thing is that God uses His creation to teach Abram. He asks him to look at the stars as a way to show Abram how abundant his life would be. I like that, because it justifies us doing the same thing. I might think it's cheesy that some churches insist on singing every worship song over a waterfall or a sunset. But God Himself used nature to prove a point so I think it's completely OK to see Him in the world around us.

But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to discuss how God spoke to Abram in the end of the chapter. After what appeared to have been some fairly casual conversations (if such a thing is possible with God) Abram is instructed to prepare a sacrifice. Then verse 12 and 13 say, "As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the LORD said to him …"

Did you ever notice how God appeared? I've written about it before. It was in the midst of a thick and dreadful darkness. The stage for their discussion was not the angelic yellow glow that most movies or stories associate with God. No chubby angels played harps. No sunlight blinded Abram. Instead, a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.

What's terrifying about that is that I think God still works that way sometimes. I might like to believe that when I find myself surrounded by what feels like eternal night and get lost in a dark patch of life, God is not speaking then. But this verse suggests otherwise. I might think I am alone in the pit. That the night is something I have to get through before God will speak. But in this chapter, thick, dreadful darkness was His medium. It was His vehicle to share His message.

You might be in dark times right now. You might be in dreadful times next month. I hope that even in the midst of the long night, you will pause and ask, if like Abram, this is God's way of speaking purpose into your life.

Genesis 14 - The Keyser Soze of the Bible

2008-06-21T04:40:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, when I got out of the pigpen and came back home, I used to struggle with a certain phrase. It was not some deep statement or complicated prayer. It was not even something even particularly holy. Here is what I said for a few frustrated months:

"I just wish I could figure God out."

I was angry because so much of who He is and what He does, did not make sense to me. I mean even the good stuff, that He loved me despite the things I had done, baffled my tiny head. And so I would sit and think and struggle and grumble to figure God out.

He wouldn't let me though. I think He knew is that what I wanted wasn't a relationship, it was a formula. I wanted to master God like a math problem and then I would be done. He knew that the minute I had "figured Him out," I would be done. I would be gone. I would be lost all over again.

That's part of the reason I like Genesis 14. In addition to Abram's lesson about taking money or gifts from people we shouldn't, Melchizedek makes a cameo. Have you heard of this guy?Scholars debate about who he is. Abram tithes to him and he is called a "priest of the God Most High." Some believe he was the "appearance on earth of the pre-incarnate Christ in a temporary bodily form." He's like the character Keyser Soze in the movie "Usual Suspects."

Regardless of who he is, to me he represents mystery. To me, in the middle of a very logical chapter about a battle and a rescue and the inner workings of kings, God drops an incredibly mysterious figure into the story. I think He loves doing that. I think He loves reminding us that His truth is deeper and older and more mysterious than we can understand.

It's easy to breeze on by Melchizedek. His cameo is so short in the grand scheme of things that it's not difficult to miss it. And the mysteries you'll see today are the very same. After reading one time about Moses and the burning bush I remember praying "God, I wish there was something mysterious in my life that you called me to understand like the burning bush." I felt like in a matter of seconds He answered by saying, "Your wife is a mystery. I want you to understand her."

He was right. She is a mystery. The way my kids process new things is a mystery. How or why people are reading this site is a mystery. And when I get comfortable with the idea that I can't figure God out, I get to enjoy the beauty of being surrounded by mystery. We miss the domestic mysteries in our own lives every day. I hope you won't this morning.

Genesis 13 - Good meaning bad

2008-06-20T03:00:00.000-07:00

For me, using drugs wasn't the real problem. I mean the actual taking of the drug and the moments or hours that came after that was not a miserable experience. If it was, if it was devoid of pleasure and completely miserable, no one would ever take them in the first place. No, miserable always waited around the corner. It was never far away. It was always there lurking, but for at least a brief time, the drugs pretended to work. I was numb. I was not sad. I thought I was good.

But much like Lot in Genesis 13, I thought temporary green pastures meant permanent prosperity. Lot didn't plan on ending up in a city that God would destroy. I'm not sure anyone really makes that decision. But that is where he landed. I know this is kind of a spoiler, but things don't work out well for the city of Sodom. So how did Lot end up there?

From first glance, the land he entered is described as looking like "the garden of the Lord." Wow, that's just about the most extreme compliment you can give in the Bible. On the Biblical scale of awesome, the garden is near the top of the list. So I imagine that when Lot saw that, it was an easy decision to head that way.

And everything looked great. He was on his way. He parted company with Abram. He was moving up in the world like the Jeffersons. But, less than 40 words later, he's camping near Sodom. And the men of Sodom are described as being wicked and sinning greatly against the Lord. (By the way, let's talk about that word "against" later. We sometimes think we can be the sinning version of Switzerland, hurting no one.)

The simple truth is that Lot chased green pastures and found Sodom. I chased getting high and found the bottom. You're working a ton of hours and will find that every promotion in the world won't fill that space that needs filling. You're shopping for another pair of shoes without taking the last pair out of the box.

We all have our own pastures. We all find our own Sodoms. Today, as you enter the weekend, my hope is that you'll remember that sometimes, even the places that look like the garden of the Lord, turn out to be the city of Sodom.

Genesis 12 - The Battle of I

2008-06-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

One of the things that sometimes makes me frustrated is when a friend asks me to repeat something I said. It's probably a sign of my immaturity, but I get irritated because on some level I feel like the only reason I have to say something twice is that the person wasn't listening the first time. They didn't consider me important enough to listen to, tuned me out and then woke back up when some word I said triggered them. Fortunately, as counselor #3 has said many times, I am not God.

God is all about repeating things. He is not afraid to be a broken record with a simple message if He feels for a second that we might miss it. Genesis 12 is a great example of that. Here, in the first three verses are six things God repeats to Abram:

go to the land I will show you
I will make you into a great nation
I will bless you
I will make your name great
I will bless those who bless you
whoever curses you I will curse

Six times He repeats those words, driving home over and over again that it will be Him, not Abram, that does this. He even follows it up in verse 7 by saying, "I will give this land." But what happens when Abram gets to Egypt? He gets afraid and tells his wife, "Say that you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you."

Do you see the change there? Abram takes control and says "I will." He borrows God's phrase for a minute so that he can protect "my life." And in the process, he prostitutes his wife.

I confess, all too often, my hand is on the "I will" button. My heart is fearful that despite the constant reassurance, God won't do what He says. But the truth is, He repeats things because He loves us. And He fulfills the things He repeats because He is love. It is His nature. It is the air He breathes.

Today, I pray I will embrace the "I won't" side of things and give God the room to masterfully create the "I will" He has planned for my life.

Genesis 11 - What is possible?

2008-06-18T05:57:00.000-07:00

One of the questions people ask me is, "How do you get all this writing done?" I think that's a good question. I have a full time job, where I write all day. I have two kids, a wife, a men's group, freelance writing on the side and a beta fish. That last one doesn't add a lot of time, but still, I have to keep that fish out of a lot of scuffles with the mirror in the bathroom, which is a hassle.

But the truth is, most of what I am doing right now seems really easy. Not because I am overtly talented or smart, but because God is. I feel like all I have to do is stay close to Him and show up to the blank page. I didn't create any of the cool stuff that is happening, so I don't have as much pressure to maintain it as I anticipated. I get to sit back and enjoy watching God do the impossible.

That's kind of the opposite of what happened in Genesis 11 with the tower of Babel. The people wanted to reach the heavens and make their own name known around the earth. God wasn't cool with that. So He stepped in and made everything impossible by fracturing the common language into a thousand different dialects.

Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever felt yourself push against the incredible momentum of God? I've written about it before and I will write about it again because it is impossible. The littlest things become complicated. The people you should be able to work with become difficult. Your best laid plans become a thousand different dialects in the desert.

I tried for about a year to write a book and get people to validate my ideas. I banged on doors like Relevant Magazine and a handful of publishers. But it didn't work. I was told no and no thanks and not right now at every step. I was building my own tower of Babel. I was raising a monument to how awesome Jon Acuff is and God made it impossible.

The truth is pretty simple. I think we all build towers sometimes. I think we all get frustrated at the languages we find when we try to march off without God. But ultimately, I think when God is moving with us, there is nothing we can't accomplish. When God is moving against, there is nothing we can accomplish.

Genesis 10 - My family

2008-06-17T04:24:00.000-07:00

This is one of those chapters that challenges my concept of writing a post per day, for each chapter. If you read Genesis 10, you'll see that it is essentially a family history of Noah's sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Have you ever wondered why chapters like this are in the Bible? I mean, if you were God, wouldn't you make sure every chapter of the Bible had deep, deep wisdom and knowledge? Wouldn't you jam pack this thing with goodness on every page?

But maybe, despite my first impression, that is exactly what God did here. Maybe this chapter is actually pretty important. Maybe the information about Noah's family is there so that I'll get curious about my own family tree.

In counseling, they call that working on your "family of origin." You basically spend time trying to understand what the roles and rules in your family were. For instance, who was the "scapegoat" in your family? Who was the "hero" or the "addict?" Who played the role of the "mascot," constantly joking to make sure things never got too uncomfortable in the room? What roles did everyone play? What were the rules? In some families, there was a rule that you "did not show feelings" or that "anger is sinful" or that "boys don't cry" or that "honest feelings should be hidden and expressed in sarcasm."

There are a millions rules and roles. If we don't ever spend time understanding them, then we repeat them. We forget that. We forget that for 18 years, we basically had a crash course in life from our families. Good or bad, ugly or beautiful, it can be a pretty powerful thing to go back and learn what it is you learned growing up.

Maybe this chapter wasn't so bad after all.

Genesis 9 - We show our drunks

2008-06-16T04:21:00.000-07:00

Chapter 9 is jam packed with some pivotal information. In it, God instructs us to "be fruitful and increase in number." He lays out the symbolism of the rainbow and promises never to wipe us out again with a flood. He establishes boundaries for the protection of human life and the very relationship between us and all the animals. But that's not why I like chapter 9. I like it because Noah gets drunk.

Not that I support drunkenness. Not at all. Not that I like Noah sinning and laying naked in his tent, essentially passed out from too much wine. It's actually a pretty gross picture of a man that just followed God with all his heart. The reason I like it is because it's real.

Different people have different criticisms of the Bible. It's full of errors because it was written by man. It's not true. It's not relevant to this day and age. There is no shortage of arguments that attempt to defame the Bible, but one that is really hard to make is that "the Bible isn't real."

Verses like 21, "When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent" are such perfect examples of how very real the Bible is. Noah is a hero of faith. He should be held up as a great man. He walked with God and helped save mankind. But when he fell, when he got drunk and lay nude, the Bible didn't gloss over that. The Bible didn't sugar coat that story or omit it. The Bible tells us like it is. When our heroes rise, we see that, when they fall, we see that too.

I don't know if other religions treat their heroes like that, but I am glad the Bible does. I am glad the word of God is real and deals with both the beautiful and the ugly. Because it means that I can trust both.

Genesis 8 - The birds we send

2008-06-15T04:05:00.000-07:00

It is not good to test God. A guy named "Jesus Christ" said that, so I have to believe it's true. But in Genesis 8 it almost feels like Noah tests God.

I'm of course talking about the verses in which Noah sends out the birds. I don’t think I ever realized how many times he sends them out. He sent a raven first and then three doves. Those actions have certainly come to symbolize hope in Christianity, the image of a dove flying with an olive leaf in its mouth, but I think they are more than that. There are three things I want to learn from this passage:

1. 40 meant 40
Noah didn't open the ark and send a bird out until it had been 40 days, which was the amount of time God had promised. His sending of the first bird was not just an aviary adventure, it was a testament to Noah's belief that God kept his word. If He said 40, then Noah trusted that He meant 40.

2. It's OK to change birds.
I really like that Noah started with a raven and ended with a dove. He was flexible. He didn't whine when the raven didn't work out, he was open to trying something new. Sometimes I get so focused on doing what I think God wants me to do that I get frozen in my methods. It has to be this job you want me at God. I have to marry this person and live in this town and have things exactly this way. But I think sometimes God wants us to start with ravens and end with doves.

3. Patience takes time.
Noah didn't expect things to change on day 41. In fact after the olive leaf dove he waited seven more days to send out another one. God's will takes time and Noah was willing to give God the time He wanted. How many times in my own life have I seen an olive leaf and rushed into action? How can I wait seven days and send out another bird if that's what God wants?

I like Genesis 8. It feels simple and honest and yet full of interesting things like ravens and doves and patience and rain. It feels like a slow start to a deep book, a gradual entry to deeper pools of knowledge. It's not complicated, but there are layers of ideas to unfold. Which is fun and challenging and what I hope to do with every chapter of the Bible.

Happy Father's Day.

Genesis 7 - Until Love

2008-06-14T04:13:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if there were dinosaurs on the ark with Noah. They don't get a shout out in Genesis 7. None of the verses specifically say, "And then, with great difficulty, Noah captured a T-Rex and was able to strap him down in the basement of the ark."

But I do think that this section of Genesis is one of those Velcro places in the Bible. People get stuck here and argue here about the intricacies of the story. They discuss whether dinosaurs were on the ark, how old the earth is, where science and faith intersect.

I have to confess that I'm not an expert on a lot of that. I think it's a perfectly legitimate thing to discuss and I think God smiles when we learn and explore His truth and the nuances of it with the brains He gifted us with. I think that there is great beauty in understanding science and seeing God's fingerprints on the things we experience in this world from a biological, physical sense. I applaud the many people that use this approach as a way to engage people that don't know the Lord. I don't however think God's cool when we get stuck on any one particular issue.

With me, that issue isn't evolution, it's porn. I often rail against that topic, trying to get people and churches to see it as a problem and start working toward a plan to combat what I feel like is an out of control monster. But sometimes, I focus too much on the specifics of that issue and not enough on the actual people that are struggling with it.

What if we kept faith simple instead? What if the only things we got stuck on was loving God, loving others and loving ourselves? The other day I admitted, it's easier to traffic in ideas than it is to love people. People are messy and difficult to understand. An idea can be put in a box and controlled to an extent, mastered even a little. But until I've got my love for God, my love for others and my love for me (perhaps the hardest of the three) humming along nicely, I probably shouldn't get lost trying to figure out whether there was a brontosaurus on the ark or whatever happened to all the unicorns.

Genesis 6 - The walk before the water.

2008-06-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

I want to do "big things" for God. I am not entirely sure what that means. It probably means that I want to write a book and become a public speaker and eventually get really big fake teeth so that I look "pastor handsome." OK, everything except that last one is real. I want to do big, massive, powerful things with God, right this second. In the immortal words of Van Halen, I want everything "right now."

But in reading Genesis 6 today I realized that God doesn't work that way. He can, I mean He's not incapable of doing that, but I'm not sure that's His style. In Genesis 6:9, we are told that Noah "walked with God." It's a pretty simple sentence really, but it's one we take for granted because we get distracted by the ark.

I think the Bible has a rhythm and when we ignore it, we miss things. I don't think it's accidental that before God tells Noah to build the ark, before Noah gets his instructions, we are told they walk together. We think sometimes that it had to Noah must have been dumbstruck when God gave him his instructions, but maybe he wasn't. Have you ever thought about that? Maybe years spent walking with God taught Noah that anything was possible?

We often don't take the time to walk with God. We want the Ark moment right now. But maybe God wants to walk with us first. Maybe He wants to hang out, like He did with Noah, before He reveals some massive mission. Maybe He wants to take a million walks with us before He sends a single raindrop. Maybe I need to be focused on taking one smell step with God instead of one giant leap for me-kind.

It's an admittedly simple idea, but I think we all need to walk before there's any water.

Genesis 5 - Repeat

2008-06-12T04:18:00.000-07:00

Chapter 5 in Genesis is not exactly packed with action. It's essentially a list of lineage with the names of people and how long they lived. But hidden inside that information are two verses that are pretty interesting. Here is what verses 1 and 2 say:

"When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them 'man.'"

I highlighted a few words in that section because I think they are really important. The word "created" is repeated three times in two verses. Why? I think God repeats the things He knows we will struggle with. On those days when I don't feel like His work of art, He has left a love note for me, He has gone out of his way to tell me He created me.

Created.
Created.
Created.

And if I miss that, He tells me He made me. He called us man. He gave us our name.

Above that, He blessed us. After He made us, He blessed us and named us. Please note that it doesn't say, "He blessed those that deserved it." Or, "He blessed those that had a consistent quiet time and were able to read the whole Bible in a year." The blessing is part of our nature as much as the need for oxygen is. We are wired with it. From creation, it has been a gift we were given.

My prayer today is that regardless of how gross you feel, regardless of if you've made life one big, broken inescapable mess, you'll remember one true idea - you were created by God.

Genesis 4 - The Green Barrier

2008-06-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

The country of Algeria is fighting a losing battle against the desert. Right now, the Sahara occupies 85% of Algeria and only 3% of all their land is cultivable. And the desert is growing. It is getting bigger. It is hungry.

In order to stop it from swallowing up more land, Algeria built a forest 2.5 to 16 miles thick called "the green barrier." It's essentially an army of trees tasked with waging war against the marching sands of the Sahara.

For some reason, this information reminded me of what God told Cain in Genesis 4.

"But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."

I like that idea, the need to be aware that sin is crouching at our doors. Sin, like the Sahara is waiting for us. Waiting for our trees to fall and give way to sandstorms of temptation and the steady wear and tear of desert life.

How's your forest? The one in Algeria is failing. They only planted one kind of tree and it looks like that may have been a mistake. That should have planted a dozen different varieties. I think life is the same way. If you only have one plan, one accountability partner, one time during the day you connect with God, one idea for dealing with all of the outside influences that are trying to get in, I think we'll fail.

I pray your forest will be thick with friends. I pray it will grow strong on God's word. I pray it will weather the storms that this life stirs up.

Because the desert is waiting for us, it is crouching at our doors.

Genesis 3 - The Count in the Garden

2008-06-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

What is your take on the whole ejection from Eden? When you read it in Genesis 3, what do you think? In that moment when Adam and Eve, images of God, are barred from the garden, what feelings does that conjure up for you? For me, it conjures up a scene from the book, The Count of Monte Cristo.

In the book, after the Count has been gracious to everyone that was kind to him before he was wrongfully imprisoned, there is a turning point. There is a drastic change of character and pace and story. For revenge is about to be enacted. This is what the Count says before he launches himself at his enemies with an unsurpassed violence.

"And now, farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude. I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked."

I used to imagine that was how God felt when he kicked Adam and Eve out. That He was enraged and disgusted and overwhelmed with the desire to hurt them. And in the midst of all those negative thoughts, I missed the unbelievable tenderness of the verses.

You probably did not miss it, but I did. I failed to see that by barring Adam and Eve from Eden he was loving them. By preventing them from entering, He was creating a way for them to find Him in the end. For if they ate the tree of life, they would live forever and be apart from God forever. In verse 22, God says, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." They would never die, never know His embrace again.

So the ejection from the Garden wasn't hatred. It was death, because in this case, death was a gift, the gift of one day being reunited with the Lord that loved them enough to allow them to die.

Genesis 2 - Alone

2008-06-09T02:00:00.000-07:00

When I read chapter 2 in Genesis, I was first struck by the intimacy of God breathing the breath of life into Adam. It was incredibly tender, a reflection of how much we matter. While the magnificence of the ocean and the brilliance of light was spoken into existence, only we were shared life in such a personal way.

But other writers, better writers, have covered the gift of life and what breath really symbolizes. So instead, I want to spend a few seconds on loneliness. Have you ever noticed that the very second thing God says about Adam is "It is not good for man to be alone." The very first is a warning that death will result if he eats from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The second statement God makes is about being alone.

Sometimes, in this world, we get intoxicated by the concept of independance. We see "going it alone" as a sign of strength, a testament to our character. It's just me against the world, if I can make it there, I'll make it, anywhere.

But God thought loneliness was so important he mentioned it second. Maybe eating the apple wasn't the only way you could die. Maybe being alone is a different kind of death. Not that everyone has to be married. Not at all. I think there are lots of people God calls to remain single. But I think He always wants us in relationship. Whether that's in the context of marriage or a friendship with a neighbor or a brother.

The last thing I'll say is that it's kind of funny to me that in essence, God and Adam auditioned all the animals American Idol style to see if they could find a suitable helper for Adam. Verse 20 says, "But for Adam no suitable helper was found." What if kangaroos had been suitable? Am I the only one that thinks about things like that? What if, at the end of the day, God said, "You know what Adam, the kangaroo has a helpful pocket, this strong tail and can reach high places with his incredible ups. Let's make him your helper."

I'm weird for thinking that, right?