How to Fail with Grace

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Failure is a part of life, and how we handle it reveals our character. I’m not talking about the iterative failures, like practicing a skill and getting gradually better. I’m not even talking about moral failures or sin, although how we handle that also reveals our character.

I’m talking about the “can’t get there from here” failures, where you realize it’s time to cut your losses and move on. I’m talking about when you realize something not only didn’t work, but isn’t going to work.

There is a time to “stay the course,” and not let a failure dissuade you from your goals. But there is also a time to cut your losses and move in a different direction. How to tell the difference is the sticky wicket, but that’s the subject for another post.

Reality checks hurt. But they are also extremely useful. Here are 4 things to do that transform present failures into future successes.

1) Treat Everything Like an Experiment

I recently failed at a major video project I’d put a lot of time and effort into. Called Having Hard Conversations, it was a series of four videos targeting adult Sunday schools and small groups in churches. The goal was to talk about things we aren’t typically talking about in church, but should be, like depression, trauma, suicide, and being post-abortive.

After making two of the four videos (depression and post-abortive), I realized I just was not hitting the video production quality the project required to be successful. Although the actual content was excellent, it was clearly amateur video, not production quality. No pastor would use, let alone buy, these videos for his adult Sunday school or small group. They’re just not sufficient quality.

This can be scary to admit, because “failure” is the worst label anyone can be taunted with. But the truth is, I didn’t fail. The project failed. There’s a huge difference. It was a good idea, and I tried my best. The only way to know it wasn’t going to work was to try it.

Some of us came from families where it wasn’t ok to try and fail. If you didn’t do something perfect the first time, you were shamed. That taught us to never try, to never take risks. This comes from the lie that your value is your success.

But the truth is, you are not what you do. Failing at stuff does not make you a failure. You didn’t fail; the thing you tried failed. The experiment failed.

So try new stuff. Treat everything like an experiment. It’s ok if it fails. It’s no reflection on you.

2) Lick Your Wounds

Even so, it still hurts to fail, especially coming to the realization that what you worked so hard at just isn’t going to work.

Be honest with yourself. Allow yourself to grieve the loss of that idea. Grieving gives your heart closure, and opens the door for the next thing. You don’t want the next idea to be saddled with baggage from the previous one.

So lick your wounds, and admit it hurts. Then pick yourself up, dust yourself off, re-evaluate, and move forward.

3) Learn Something

Do a “lessons learned” session. What went right? What went wrong? Write these lessons down so you don’t repeat what didn’t work, but can leverage what did.

It’s healthy (and important!) to learn what you’re good at, and what you’re not good at.

One of the biggest failures in the Bible was the Apostle Paul’s trip to Athens, Greece. You can read the story in Acts 17:16-18:1.

The upshot is that Paul was greatly distressed to find Athens so full of idols. There was even an idol to an unknown god, in case they missed one. Paul knew the Greeks were into logic. So when he got to speak to the city’s thought leaders, he made a very logical argument. He cleverly used the “unknown god” idol as an entry point. He referenced their own poets and literature. It was actually a brilliant speech to lead someone from idol worship to Jesus.

It was also a dismal failure. They laughed and sneered at him. Then they pocket-vetoed him. As they dismissed him, they told him “we want to hear you again on this subject.” Yeah, right. They never called him; it was just an easy way to show him the door.

Paul had very little success in Athens. But he learned something. He made a resolution within himself. His next stop was Corinth, and, based on his failure in Athens, his message in Corinth was very different. He wrote about it later:

I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. – Paul, 1 Corinthians 2:2-5

This is a very different approach than he used in Athens. No more wise and persuasive words, he resolved to know only Jesus crucified, and use only the argument of the Spirit’s power.

Paul learned from his failure. So can we.

4) Increased Clarity Is a Win

From his failure in Athens, the Apostle Paul got great clarity about what his message should be moving forward, and it shaped the rest of his ministry.

Before starting my video project, my well-thought out plan looked like a winner. It should’ve worked, but it didn’t. Now I know why. I learned a ton along the way. My faulty assumptions were revealed. Professional quality video is a lot harder than I originally thought.

I still think Having Hard Conversations is an important message, and I’m not giving up on it. If our churches are going to host the Third Great Awakening, our churches have to become a safe place for people to grieve and heal. I’m still passionate about seeing that happen.

Having failed at producing adult Sunday school quality, full-length, professional video, I have better clarity now. I can’t bring about the change I want to see through that means, at least not with my present resources or abilities.

But I have a ton of great soundbites from experts, as well as my own soundbites, that would make a lot of great, short (< 5 min) videos on YouTube. Maybe we launch a YouTube channel on this subject. A two to five-minute video on YouTube requires a lot less quality, and can be just, if not more, impactful to the culture at large.

The seeds of your future success are your failures today.

So try stuff. You can’t move on to what works until you’ve discovered what doesn’t. And you only discover what doesn’t work by trying stuff.

What About You?

What have you failed at, where you realized you had to cut your losses? How did you do that? Your story will help others; please tell us in the comments. What are you struggling with now? Can the community help you? And please share this post if it will bless others.

How to End the Disconnect between Our Head Knowledge and Our Lives

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There’s a deception going around the Body of Christ that breaks my heart. We have seen so many lives ruined because people believe this lie. To some degree or another, this lie is at the start of every deceptive road a Christian goes down.

“I Know It’s Sin, But I’ll Be Ok”

Abortion-minded clients come into our local crisis pregnancy center and identify as Christians. Even after seeing an ultra-sound, sometimes they leave still determined to have an abortion, saying, “I know it’s a sin, but I’ll be ok.”

That breaks my heart. But I see it all over the place in the Body of Christ. It’s our favorite line to justify our sin, whether it’s abortion, pornography, or cheating on taxes.

Does any Christian man doing porn really not know it’s sin? I doubt it. Does any Christian couple living together, acting like they’re married without really being married, not know it’s sin? I doubt it.

So, why? There are many reasons, many ways to get caught in a web of deception. But they all have an element of, “I know it’s sin, but I’ll be ok.”

No, You Won’t Be Ok. You’ll Be Alive, But You Will Not Be Ok.

It’s like saying, “I can cut my arm off. Everybody’s doing it. Lefty is the new cool. I’ll be ok.”

No, you won’t be ok. You’ll survive, you’ll still be alive, but you’ll be far from ok. Just think about this absurd example of actually cutting your arm off. You’d never be able to tie your own shoes or cut your own meat.

“But all my shoes have Velcro and I’m going vegan.” You’re missing the point. You can try to mitigate the consequences however you want, but life will never be the same. Sin destroys. You will not be ok.

“No One Will Know:” An Example from a King Who Was Not Ok

Look at King David. His sin, “secret” adultery with Bathsheba, did not leave him ok. He probably thought, “Look at that hottie taking a bath. I’ll bring her over to the palace for a quickie. No one will know. Yeah, I know it’s sin, but I’ll be ok.”

Yes, he was forgiven. Psalm 51 is a beautiful picture of David’s repentance. And God was with him through all his subsequent troubles, including having his daughter raped, 4 sons die, including running for his life from his own son, whose death he had to pretend to celebrate. David was far from ok. (You can read the whole story in 2 Samuel 11 through 1 Kings 2.)

The Problem: A Disconnect between Our Head Knowledge and Our Lives

We show what we really believe by how we live. If we say we believe something, but don’t live it out, we don’t really believe it.

We go to church every Sunday. We read the Bible. We’ve accepted Jesus as our personal Savior. But when it comes to situations in our life, do we give ourselves a bye on what we know is right?

Do we risk following Jesus and doing it God’s way when it’s our own life? If not, we don’t really believe it.

Intellectual assent is not Christianity. The only person we’re fooling is ourselves.

The Solution: 3 Choices

There is a solution. It’s a series of 3 choices we, as the Body of Christ, need to make.

Choice #1: Repent of Our Idolatry

“I know it’s sin, but I’ll be ok.” That’s idolatry at the deepest level. It’s not ok, and you won’t be ok. Although God will be with you through the consequences, God’s grace is not a license to sin. The book of Romans was written to address this fallacy.

We cannot tolerate any secret sin within ourselves. We notice it, and we cry out to God in repentance until he removes it. We design our life to keep us away from that thing as much as possible.

You get the idea. Repentance isn’t just tears and confession, although confession is certainly part of it and tears often come. Until we make a practical life change, we haven’t really repented.

Choice #2: Speak & Teach the Hard Truths

I went to a church for many years where, in his sermon every Sunday, the pastor wove in something about sexual integrity, tithing, or TV. Even if it was just a sentence, it was there. Every. Single. Sunday.

As churches, we need to stop taking for granted that people know how to live righteously. Even people in the church, who have been Christians a long time, often don’t. And it’s our fault for assuming they do and not regularly teaching on it.

As Christians, we are God’s voice of love to the world. It’s not love to watch destructive life styles devastate people and not say anything. The world desperately needs us to speak the truth in love.

“Silence does not interpret itself.” – Father Frank Pavone, Priests for Life

When the church doesn’t regularly teach about practical righteousness, or when Christians don’t speak up about what we know is wrong, we’re leaving our friends and children to the influence of the world.

Choice #3: Trusting God: Prepare to Die

One of my favorite memes is from the movie The Princess Bride: “Hello. My name is Indigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

If we’re really serious about being Christians, and not just playing church, we need to live this version: “Hello. My name is Jesus. You follow me. Prepare to die. To yourself.”

(NOTE: I’m not talking about suicide here or being martyred, or giving up on life. I’m talking about living the life God’s calling us to live, dying to our own selfish desires that don’t honor God.)

When disaster strikes, we need to be prepared to follow God’s ways no matter what. Because in the heat of the moment, the lie is, “If you do it God’s way, it’ll kill you.” And in the heat of the moment, we believe it. From where we stand, looking at this mountain in front of us, it looks true.

And maybe it really is. Ok then. Time to test our belief in the afterlife. Here we die.

The truth is, even if we actually die following God, that’s not really dying. You just passed the test and now are in glory. Small price to pay, looking back on it from the other side.

But the truth also is, the vast majority of the time, you won’t die. God will come through. And not trusting God, doing it our own way, actually brings the disaster we tried to avoid.

Your Turn

What are your thoughts? Tell us your story in the comments. Did this post strike a nerve? Or did it resonate? And please share if others need to read this post.

3 Great Ways to Hack Your Fear

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The most dangerous contagion in our society right now isn’t covid-19. It’s fear. It’s actually more contagious and can be more deadly. Here are 3 great ways to hack your fear and keep it from spinning into overdrive and irrationally controlling you.

First, though, remember fear does have its rightful place. It’s a God-given emotion. Our previous post talks about how to use your fear along with your faith to your advantage.

But when fear gets in control, it warps our thinking and paralyzes our whole being. The fear center in our brain, the amygdala, can actually take our cerebral cortex offline, so we’re temporarily incapable of rational thought while the fear is in control.

Here’s a 90-second video to explain how this works:

The Hand-Brain Model

Here are 3 great ways to hack your fear, so you can use what it’s telling you, but not be controlled by it.

1) Play the Game

My daughter had a very bad experience with horses at a camp where the leaders really didn’t know how to introduce kids to horses. So years later, when she started taking riding lessons, she was severely held back by this fear. Until I taught her to play the game.

Her fear of falling off the horse was keeping her from riding (posting) properly. I asked her, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid? How would you ride?”

“Well, I’d ride confidently like this and this and this,” she answered.

“Then do that. This is your chance to be an actress. Play the role of someone who’s not afraid, and ride like they would. Do that.”

That helped her tame her fearful heart enough for her head to take over and ride well. Pretty soon her heart caught up and realized it didn’t have to be afraid, and that fear was over.

Don’t let fear paralyze you. Play the game. What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Do that.

2) Don’t React before It Happens

When I was young and my dad took me to the dentist, I began to cry in the waiting room, afraid of the imminent, painful, experience. My dad gently stopped me, and said, “David, has he hurt you yet?”

“No,” I answered.

“Then don’t cry yet. There’s nothing wrong with crying when you’re hurt. But don’t cry before you’re hurt.”

That made a lot of sense to me then, and it still does today. I know people whose family members have checked themselves into hospitals because watching coronavirus news reports whipped them into a frenzy of fear where they could not function. For these people, the coronavirus itself didn’t disrupt their lives as much as the fear of it did, the fear of something that hadn’t happened yet.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m in no way disparaging social distancing, shutdowns, etc. Yes, be careful so you don’t get shot in the foot. But don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Don’t cry before you’re hurt.

The saddest covid-19 story I’ve heard is a man who took his own life because he had covid-19, to protect his family. There are two really tragic points about this.

One, covid-19 has a 97% recovery rate (according to WebMD). Yes, it’s the worst flu you’ve ever had, and you feel like you’re going to die for three weeks instead of three days, but 97% of patients recover. Three bad weeks are not worth the rest of your life, or depriving your family from their husband/father for the rest of their lives.

Two, he didn’t actually have it! He had some symptoms, but, post-mortem, tested negative! What a tragedy!

This man actually died of the fear contagion, not the coronavirus one.

3) Realize You Are Being Played

We rely on the news media in order to stay informed and aware of what’s going on. Unfortunately, keeping you informed is not the news media’s mission.

We need to realize the media is playing to a business model—selling fear and outage. That influences (1) which stories they bring you, and (2) how they spin those stories. This is not a liberal vs. conservative thing. Fox News is just as guilty as CNN. Both sides have devolved into (1) selling you what they think you want to hear, and (2) spreading FUD—Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. They do this for one, simple reason: It works. Unfortunately. But we can change that.

When they spin the news to stroke your bias and emotionally charge you up so you watch the next segment or click the headline link, they make money. It’s really that simple.

Now here’s the rub. We have to listen to or read the news to find out what’s going on. But realize neither side is giving you an objective presentation of the facts. If you feel outrage or fear rising up, especially fear, realize you’re being played. They have designed what you’re consuming to manipulate that fear you’re feeling right now.

So why consume news at all if they’re manipulating me? For the same good reasons that armies question enemy prisoners. Yes, you know they’re going to lie to you. You know they’re going to try to manipulate you. But knowing that, you can still glean useful information if you filter it properly.

Do that with the news media. If you feel your fear or outrage rising, it’s time to turn it off. Practice social distancing with the news media.

Realize you’re being played. Assimilate the information, but reject the manipulated emotion.

How about You?

Does this help? What fear are you dealing with? You have a whole community here to help you; this is a safe place. Sometimes just talking about it and expressing it helps tremendously. Or how have you overcome fear? Tell us in the comments; your story will help someone else. And please share this post if it would bless others.

Why Jesus and You Can Walk Out of Your Tomb of Lies this Easter

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This is Easter week, a.k.a. Resurrection Sunday. This is the single greatest, most significant event in human history. When Jesus rose from the dead, he shattered it all. One thing all the different human systems of morality, government, and ethics absolutely agree on is that once you die, you’re supposed to stay dead. Period. That’s the way it works.

Until now. Jesus shattered it all. And if death is no longer absolute, then everything else is up for grabs.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Do you know the old Hans Christian Anderson fable of The Emperor’s New Clothes? If not, here’s a fun link to the Danny Kaye version.

The gist of the story is these two crooked tailors pretend to bring the Emperor a new set of clothes. They pretend to hold them so the Emperor and his court can see how beautiful they are, but their hands are really empty. They tell the Emperor’s court these clothes are magical: only intelligent people who aren’t fools can see them. The Emperor, not wanting to appear foolish, pretends he can see them and goes on and on about how beautiful they are. All the courtiers, taking their cue from the Emperor and not wanting to appear foolish in front of their peers, also pretend to see them and to be impressed by their beauty.

The deception feeds on itself and the Emperor schedules a parade through the capital streets to show off his new magical and beautiful clothes. Word has spread so everyone knows what they’re supposed to see. Not wanting to be the only one in the kingdom to appear foolish, all the adults marvel at the beauty of the Emperor’s new clothes. But none of them could actually see them, because in reality they weren’t there.

Except for one little boy who didn’t get the memo and didn’t know what he was supposed to see. When the parade passed him, he cried out in shock and surprise, “The emperor’s in the all-together naked!” And he couldn’t help but start laughing hysterically.

Real laughter, especially when you’re trying to not laugh, is contagious. The people around the little boy suddenly realized the ridiculousness of it all and started laughing also. And the laughter spread until the whole crowd was laughing at the naked Emperor who suddenly realized what an idiot he was being, and how he’d been taken advantage of.

For their sakes, I hope the two crooked tailors had made the country’s border by then!

Jesus is like that. He laughs at the world’s systems and shatters all the lies that keep us bound. All the lies we grew up with, that we take for granted, fall at the foot of the cross. Jesus wants to bring them crashing down. Jesus disrupts the status quo.

“That’s Just the Way I Am”

What lie in your life is keeping you bound? Jesus wants to shatter it. The problem is that the nature of being deceived by a lie is that you don’t know you’re deceived. So how do you know what lie is keeping you bound?

We’ve found a good litmus test is, “that’s just the way I am.” If you think that about some area of your life, you’re probably believing a lie.

“I’ll always be overweight. I’m just big-boned.” Actually, your family lied to you. Unintentionally, but they did. There’s no such thing as “big-boned.” You can choose to lose weight. Jesus died to make it possible.

“I’ll never be smart enough to amount to anything.” Who rooted those lies deep in your heart? They aren’t true. I’m writing about in the plural here because there are multiple lies in there:

  • “I’ll never be smart.” That’s not true. You can choose to be as smart as you want to be. Jesus died to make it possible.
  • “You have to be smart to amount to anything.” Not! You already amount to something. He loves you the way you are. You don’t have to change to be loved. But when you realize how deeply you’re loved, you’ll want to change.

Look, you don’t need to be smarter, stronger, thinner, prettier, taller, shorter, holier or anything else for God to love you. Jesus already infinitely loves you.

There is no circumstance, addiction, or problem you have that does not have to bow its knee to King Jesus, if you command it to. Eventually. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. And you may not see fruit right away. That’s ok. Keep fighting.

People with deep wounds who have been abused by this world, perhaps sexually or by abortion, often suffer from depression and think “it’s always going to be this way.” It’s not. Either in this world or the next, God will make it right.

Some people get healed instantly, but for others it’s a longer road. If you’re on the long road, know that there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not a “bad Christian.” It just means that God, in his mercy and great love for you, is healing you one season at a time. Bringing it all at once is sometimes more than we can handle.

The key question to ask is, “God, what are you doing in me this season?” Or, to put it another way, “Jesus, who do you want to be for me in this season?”

Although phrased differently, those two questions are really the same. Because every season of healing involves discovering God in a new way, experiencing a part of his character, his being, we haven’t experienced before.

God has a calling for you that you’re perfect for.

The enemy of our soul has used the pain in your life to set up structures of lies in your heart, to keep you from ever knowing who you really are. Jesus died to take that house of cards down. And powerful as those strongholds are, they are nothing but a house of cards before the blood of Jesus.

That’s what Easter, Resurrection Sunday, is all about. What lies are keeping you in a tomb? Jesus died to break them. Do you think you deserve to suffer because of what you’ve done in your past? That you don’t deserve better? Jesus died to erase your past.

You can come out of the tomb of your past, your bondage, all the lies holding you back, today with Jesus. Jesus wants to raise you to a new life and a new hope with him. It may not be a quick fix. It may be a long road. But it’s a road lined with hope.

Here’s a sample prayer to start on the first day of the rest of your exciting life. Use this as a guide and make it your own.

Jesus, who do you want to be for me today? Today I stop this habitual sin. Nail it to your cross. Give me your power to live without it. Show me the lies I believe, and the pain in my heart I was using my sin to medicate. I give you permission to replace my lies with your truth, all at once or one at a time, however you know is best for me. I trust you. Walk with me out of this tomb of lies into the exciting future and calling you have for me.

How about You?

What lies has Jesus set you free from? Are there some you’re still struggling with? Share your story in the comments. You’re not the only one. Your story will help others. And please share this post if it would bless others.

How to Move from Scarcity to Abundance

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Janet and I were at a local restaurant recently. The waiter wasn’t complaining, but it’d been a really lousy Sunday. He was struggling with some things in his personal life, his customers had been grouchy, and he really needed the money he didn’t get it in tips that day. It was his worst shift ever.

It’s well-known in the restaurant business that the Sunday after-church crowd is the stingiest and most demanding crowd of the week. Ask any waiter or waitress you know. These are largely Christians going out after church, still dressed in their Sunday best. We are the most demanding customers and the worst tippers.

This breaks my heart. We give a false testimony of the Kingdom of God when we act like this. We should be the most generous people on the planet, not the stingiest. We should be the most easy-going customers, not the most demanding. Servers should be fighting for the Sunday afternoon shift instead of dreading it.

After the waiter took our order and left the table, Janet and I decided we wanted to make his day. We wanted to bless him. We wanted to turn his day around and make it his best shift ever. So after our $30 meal, we left him a $100 tip. And it hurt financially. I can’t afford to be doing that all the time. But it felt really good because we obeyed the Holy Spirit.

The next time we went in that restaurant, he ran over to our table. He shared his life with us and we had his ear. We told him about the hope Jesus wants to bring to his life. That was $100 well spent.

We’ve actually done this twice. The other time the waiter chased us out into the parking lot to let us know we made a mistake. When we told him it wasn’t a mistake, he was blown away. That was really fun. That waiter also had had a really depressing shift, and we were his last patrons of the evening, and we really made his day.

I’m not patting ourselves on the back here. But I am consciously trying to be more generous with my tipping as a general rule. As royalty, as sons and daughters of the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who has infinite resources, shouldn’t we be the most generous people on the planet?

A standard tip is 18%. I’ve typically tipped 20%, not because I’m being generous, but because 20% is easier to calculate. I can calculate 10% in my head, just shift the decimal point, and then double it for 20%. Easy. And I feel good about myself because it’s more than 18%. The Holy Spirit has shown me recently that it’s all been about my convenience and feeling good about myself, not about blessing the server. So I’m upping my standard tip to 30% to overtly bless the server. Honestly, it hurts. But being more like Jesus is worth it.

What about when you get lousy service and they don’t deserve it? Tip them more. You’ve got the awesome opportunity to demonstrate the unconditional love of God. Think about it. Which is more likely to portray Jesus in a good light:

Option A: When our service is really lousy, make a point and a political statement by leaving a 1 penny tip. (Confession time: I’m not proud of it, but I’ve actually done this. I justified it by thinking if they don’t know something’s wrong, they can’t correct it. So I was really serving them by holding them accountable. Boy, they were sure lucky to have me as a patron that night! Not! Who did I think I was fooling? It may have been myself, but it sure wasn’t the Holy Spirit.)

Option B: Saying to them, “I can tell you’ve had a rough night tonight, so we left you a little extra, because God is for you and wants to bless you.” And then leaving them a lot extra.

Flip it around. Think of the equivalent situation on your job. You screw up. How do you want your employer and co-workers to respond to you? Which one of us doesn’t want something similar to Option B? Then we need to be Option B to the rest of the world. That’s being salt and light.

Generosity is a trademark of the Kingdom of God. It’s the easiest form of evangelism. You don’t have to knock on doors, just leave big tips. If we can bless people into the Kingdom of God, can you think of a better use for money? I can’t.

Bringing someone into the Kingdom is giving Jesus the reward for his suffering. Whoa! That’s a mind blow. So we’re using a temporal resource and reaping an eternal reward. Talk about return on investment!

The opposite of generosity is hoarding. Hoarding comes from a scarcity mindset. “There’s not enough to go around, so I need to protect what I have!” But the Kingdom mindset is one of abundance. We have plenty to share, even if we can’t see it all yet. We know our God will make more. Look what Jesus did with the loaves and fishes, feeding thousands with a small boy’s lunch. This is such an important concept all 4 gospels cover it (Matthew 14, Mark 16, Luke 9, and John 6).

We problem is, when we get saved, we bring our worldly scarcity mindset with us into the Kingdom. Actually, it’s not a problem, it’s natural. We all do it. It’s so ingrained in us we take it for granted and don’t even realize there’s another way to live. The problem is when we hang on to that mindset and refuse to be teachable. That’s a problem. The trick is to replace the scarcity mindset with an abundance mindset.

The best way is just start giving. As both spiritual and physical beings, what we do with our body affects our spirit. So it’s ok to start being generous even if our heart’s not in it yet. One of two things will happen:

  1. Our heart will follow along shortly once we get the hang of it and start to experience the abundance of God’s provision when we’re generous. It’s fun to try and out-give God. It’s a game that’s really awesome to lose!
  2. God will reveal our wounding. Maybe that scarcity mindset is rooted in something deeper. Maybe we have foundational lies God wants to deal with. Maybe we internally believe lies we don’t even know are there but are blocking the abundance of the Kingdom of God in our lives. God wants to heal those areas by replacing the lies with his truth.

The cool thing is, generosity is a way we can overtly practice and show our Christianity without offending anyone! Believe me, even the most hardened atheist won’t be offended if you give him money. When we’re generous, it gets people’s attention, because we’re doing something they can’t. And we’re joyful about it! Radical giving is actually really fun. We’re showing people something outside their normal paradigm and it rocks their world.

What are some practical ways we can be generous? Here’s some ideas I’ve experienced.

  • Leave big tips. However much you normally tip, up it by 10% for 30 days and see what happens. Who’s up for the 30-Day Tip Challenge?
  • The car ahead of me paid my toll once on the interstate (before EZ Pass). It was only 75 cents, but it felt really good! After that, I often paid the toll for several cars behind me.
  • A local Christian radio station in our area frequently has a campaign where they encourage people in the drive-through lane at fast-food places to pay the bill of the car behind them. Brilliant!
  • A church I was at did free car washes. People were blown away. “Why are you doing this?” they would ask. “Just to bless you.” That’s it. No tract, no hype, no hard-sell. A lot of people came to our church through that, and we weren’t even trying. It hurt giving up a Saturday, but it was fun because the Holy Spirit loved it.

I’m sure you can think of many other practical ways to be generous. Post them in the comments! And please share this post on social media if you think it would help someone else.

Why Taking a Sabbath Rest Helps Me Get More Done

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I’ve been sharing my journey of discovering how to honor the Sabbath and enter into God’s rest. Not that those are both the same thing, but they are related.

True rest, God’s rest, is not the absence of work. Regarding the Sabbath, Jesus told the Pharisees, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working” (John 5:17).

So it’s not a legalistic thing. I used to hate talking about the Sabbath because I thought it was. I thought if I wasn’t bored all day that I wasn’t honoring the Sabbath. Not true.

God’s rest is not the absence of work. God’s rest is doing the right work, the stuff God has for you. Jesus did only what he saw the Father doing (John 5:19).

And it’s not just doing the right work. You can do the right work and still choose to be stressed out over it. God’s rest is also trusting him for its success. That takes the pressure off! That doesn’t mean we do a sloppy job, we still pursue excellence and do the best we can. But we’re not stressing over the success because it doesn’t depend on us. That is so totally freeing!

There’s a huge difference between pursuing excellence and pursuing perfectionism. I know from experience there’s no rest in pursuing perfectionism. And I bet you do, too.

This is fast becoming one of my favorite verses:

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. – Jesus (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message)

The unforced rhythms of grace. I love that!

So here’s what God’s been teaching me about entering into his rest and learning the unforced rhythms of grace in my life.

I’m keeping the Sabbath by not using it to do any recurring tasks. Like our weekly blog. Like paying bills. I can do one-off tasks, things that need doing around the house or on the website. But I’ve been intentionally avoiding recurring tasks.

And it’s been wonderful! I’ve been feeling refreshed instead of exhausted. After finishing any one-off tasks I’ve had to do Sunday, I’ve had time to do things that feed my soul. Like reading for a couple hours in the evening with Janet. We both read different things, but being together and just reading is tremendously refreshing. And I feel God smile.

This is just personally what God’s been teaching me. I’m not recommending it for anybody else. And I know I’ve more to learn.

What are you learning? What is God teaching you about entering into the unforced rhythms of grace? We’d love to hear from you, and what you’re learning will bless the rest of our community. So please leave a comment and share on social media if you think this would bless someone else.

Entering God’s Rest

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The best analogy I’ve heard about entering God’s rest is from Graham Cooke, one of my favorite teachers. This is my (admittedly poor) paraphrase of his vision/dream.

Orcs were chasing me. I ran up mountains and through forests, and was nearing total exhaustion. They would catch me soon, and my one sword would not be enough. I was running across a grassy plain, about to collapse, when I saw a tent in front of me and ran inside. It was strangely peaceful. There was a fire pit of burning coals in the center, from which I could sense the presence of the Lord. I turned to see my pursuers running full speed, close to the tent. Unable to run any further, I drew my sword.

Gently and softly from the fire behind me, I heard the Lord say, “You won’t need that.”

The orcs ran right past the tent as if they couldn’t see it. In fact, when they moved onto the space the tent occupied, they didn’t come inside but instantly appeared on the other side, as if in their dimension the tent wasn’t even there! They were shouting angrily at each other for losing their prey (me) who was there just a moment ago. In the middle of a grassy open plain, where could he have gone? And they loudly and with much cursing blamed each other.

Meanwhile, I heard the Lord, softly chuckling from the fire. He was laughing at them!

Where was I? Safe, yes, totally, but where was I? I was in the Lord’s rest.

From Graham Cooke’s vision on The Way of the Warrior Series CD series. (You can get your own copy here , and Graham’s general website is here. Very much worth a browse. BTW, these are not affiliate links. I get no commission if you click them or buy from Graham. This is an honest recommendation.)

So what exactly is God’s rest?

God’s Rest, “rest” in Hebrews 3 and 4, doesn’t mean physical rest or sleep. It’s the opposite of being anxious. It’s the opposite of being fearful.

It’s that place of quiet confidence, believing the Lord would do what he said. Believing his presence in my life is enough. A place without striving. A spiritual eye in my very real hurricane of life.

Hebrews 3:19, talking about those Moses rescued from Egypt, says they were not able to enter God’s rest because of their unbelief. Earlier in chapter 3 the writer quotes Psalm 95, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion,” and “So I (God) declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest’ ”. Then he says in 3:19, “So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.”

Entering God’s rest doesn’t change the circumstances around us, but it changes the power those circumstances have over us. Our fear gives them power. When we’re not afraid of them, because we’re in God’s rest, they have no power over us. We can think clearly and act from the wisdom of the Spirit.

Today’s Action Step: When things are crazy around me, I will enter God’s rest by choosing to believe him over the fear my circumstances are trying to inspire.

I’m learning to enter his rest more and more. What are your experiences with God’s rest? How do you personally enter it? Tell us in the comments; we’re looking forward to learning from you. And please share on social media if you think this would benefit someone else.

How to Turn A Negative Vulnerability into a Positive Strength

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We all have them.

Vulnerabilities. Weaknesses. We hide them. We ignore them. We pretend they aren’t there. We’re embarrassed by them. They remind us of our small, frail, mortality. The last thing we want to do is deal with them. But that’s exactly what we need to do. And if we do it wisely, we can actually turn those vulnerabilities into strengths.

I’m talking about the secret sins. Pornography. Small cheats on expense reports at work. White lies. They don’t hurt anybody, do they? Yes, they do. They hurt you, and the people in your life. Every. Single. Time.

The worst thing we can do is ignore them. I can handle it. No, you can’t. Because here’s the thing. Sin is not static. It never remains at the same level. It is either increasing in our life or decreasing. If we think we’re “handling it,” keeping it at bay, we’re not, it’s secretly increasing.

And that’s a dangerous place to be. Because by the time we’re finally aware of it, it’s often too late. It’s exploded into our lives and it’s no longer a secret. 

The tsunami we’ve unleashed in our lives is upon us. The pornography has turned into an affair. Small “inaccuracies” on expense reports have turned into full-blown embezzlement. White lies have turned into perjury.

You’re most vulnerable when you don’t think you’re vulnerable.

And the tsunami doesn’t just hit us. No tsunami in history has ever drowned just one person. The wave hits our entire family and everyone close to us. There’s no such thing as a victimless crime.

So often we think we’ve safely hidden it away in a private corner of our lives. But seeing the devastating aftermath on our loved ones, we wish we could roll back time. If we’d known what it would cost them, we’d have dealt with it long before it got to that point. 

Look at King David and Bathsheba. His “secret” adultery (2 Samuel 11:1-5) unleashed this tsunami in his life:

  • He has to murder one of his most loyal soldiers, Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, to keep it secret. (2 Samuel 11:6-27)
  • The son born from the affair dies. (2 Samuel 12:1-23)
  • David’s son Amnon rapes his daughter Tamar. (2 Samuel 13:1-19)
  • Another of David’s sons, Absalom, kills Amnon and flees to another country. (2 Samuel 13:20-38)
  • When Absalom returns, he stages a coup and David has to run for his life. (2 Samuel 15:1-14)
  • Absalom sleeps with David’s concubines in broad daylight, so all Israel knows he’s the new king now. (2 Samuel 16:20-22)
  • When Absalom is finally defeated, he’s killed by Joab, the general of David’s army. (2 Samuel 18:9-15)
  • For the sake of his army, David has to pretend he’s happy about his son’s death. If he lets his true emotions out, his army would perceive David mourning the victory they risked their lives to give him, and they would desert him. (2 Samuel 18:33-19:8)
  • Even years later, the devastation in David’s family continued. His son Solomon (of Bathsheba) had to kill another of David’s sons, Adonijah, to secure Solomon’s throne. (1 Kings 1:1-2:25)

That is one, crazy, jacked up story! But that’s what sin does in our lives when we think we can handle it. If David had known all that would happen — his daughter would be raped, 4 of his sons would die, and he’d flee for his life from his own son, whose death he’d have to pretend to celebrate — do you think he’d have chosen differently on that warm, fateful, seemingly innocent afternoon in Jerusalem? 

Yes, David was forgiven. Psalm 51 is a beautiful picture of David’s repentance. But he still had to live with the consequences of his sin the rest of his life, even though God stayed faithful and was with him all the way through it.

David thought he could handle it. The graves of his children say otherwise. You can’t handle it either. Neither can I.

So how do we keep from falling prey to our own vulnerabilities?

There are two big steps we can take to keep from being swept away by what we thought we could handle but couldn’t.

1) Set Boundaries

Billy Graham’s ministry never had a scandal. And it’s not because he was so righteous. It’s because he realized he wasn’t. He instituted a rule that no one in his ministry, including himself, ever traveled anywhere by car with someone of the opposite sex alone (except their spouse, of course). This wasn’t legalism gone mad. This was a godly man realizing he was vulnerable and putting boundaries in place to protect his heart. And, because he knew he couldn’t handle it, sexual integrity became a strength of his ministry.

When you admit you’re vulnerable, you’re not vulnerable. You set boundaries to protect yourself from your vulnerability. 

Billy Graham knew affairs didn’t just happen overnight. So he set boundaries, for him and his staff, so nobody, himself included, would even come close to starting down that deceptive road. If the situation required two unmarried people of the opposite sex to make a trip, I think he’d have canceled the event rather than put his people, or himself, at risk.

This is what Jesus so graphically talked about in the Sermon on the Mount.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” — Jesus, Matthew 5:29-30

No, Jesus doesn’t want a bunch of one-eyed Christians called Lefty. He’s saying not to put yourself into a situation where you may be vulnerable.

For example, has pornography been a weakness? Avoid movies with nudity and even TV shows with sexual promiscuity. Avoid music that glorifies sex outside of marriage, reducing women to objects of entertainment rather than human beings and daughters of the King.

2) Get Support. Tell Someone. Get Help.

This is not “accountability.” No fair making the other person responsible for your behavior. This is you, sincerely not wanting to be devoured by sin, asking for help from someone you trust.

Tell someone. Not someone who has a problem in that area also; there’s no point just commiserating together. But preferably someone who’s been through it and overcome it. Someone who’s either won the battle, or, if they lost it, come out the other side and received healing. 

We have authority over what we’ve been set free from. Find someone who either:

  1. Has never fallen in that area, not because they’re self-righteous, but because they realized they are vulnerable and set boundaries, or,
  2. Has fallen but recovered. It was years ago, and they’ve been clean at least a decade. They’ve received healing and are walking in it.

The good news is, Jesus is more into this than we are. He wants to help us walk in his ways so we avoid the self-made tsunamis in our lives. In this fallen world, they often happen without our help. We don’t need to make more.

But in all of it, whether we brought about the tsunami ourselves or not, if David’s story teaches one thing — it’s that God is faithful. Through it all. Always.

How About You?

How have you realized your own vulnerability and set boundaries? Or have you gotten hurt by not realizing your vulnerability until it was too late? Tell us your story in the comments — it will help someone else. And please share this post if it would bless someone else.

How to Break the Chains of Approval

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At some point, you yourself have to stand up.

We learn from godly mentors, pastors, teachers, parents, influencers that God brings into our lives. They can point us to the way of faith, the narrow road of following Jesus. But at some point, we need to decide for ourselves.

Check out this story of a king who couldn’t stand up himself. The Old Testament is filled with wild stories that are so practical for us today. Check out this crazy and tragic story of King Joash of Judah. Here’s my abbreviated version. You can read the real one in 2 Chronicles 23:10-24:27.

King Joash

Joash became king of Judah when he was 7. Until then, Joash was hidden in the temple of the Lord, raised by Jehoiada the priest. His wicked grandmother Athaliah had killed off the rest of the royal family, including her own grandchildren, and seized power. (All of her direct children, the royal ones at any rate, had already died as a result of following her wicked, anti-God, influence.)

Athaliah was finally killed in the coup that set Joash, the rightful king, on the throne. The Lord’s priest Jehoiada set up the kingdom in righteousness and continued to be Joash’s chief advisor. God plucked Joash out of the wicked royal family and had him raised in the temple of the Lord. You can’t ask for a better upbringing than that. Joash was God’s course correction for that family.

BTW, if you came out of some hurtful family-of-origin circumstances, but now you’ve found the Lord, then you are God’s manifestation of mercy and grace for your family.

Joash did a lot of good, including repairing the Lord’s temple. He made the famous wooden offering box at the entrance to the temple that you may have heard about in Sunday school. Joash was really zealous for the Lord while his adopted dad Jehoiada was alive.

But after Priest Jehoiada died, Joash abandoned the temple of the Lord. He allowed his officials to make Asherah poles and idols. Why? Because they told him he should. They wanted to. Joash was afraid of losing their favor. Peer pressure. All his life he did what someone else told him to do.

God sent him many prophets to woo his heart, but Joash wouldn’t listen. God even sent the prophet Zechariah, the son of the priest Jehoiada who raised Joash. Not only did Joash not listen to him, he ordered Zechariah be stoned to death in the Lord’s own temple (2 Chronicles 24:21).

Within a year, Aram attacked Jerusalem “with only a few men” (2 Chronicles 24:24). The Lord gave Judah over to them because Judah had, under King Joash’s leadership, forsaken the Lord. Joash was severely wounded, and his officials killed him in his bed. They also dishonored him in his burial. They buried him in Jerusalem, but not in the tombs of the kings.

But wait! Joash abandoned the Lord to gain the favor of these guys! Turns out they weren’t as faithful to Joash as the Lord would’ve been. Joash made a poor choice. Duh, that’s the understatement of the year! But do we do the same thing? Do we abandon the Faithful One by bowing to peer pressure from people who will stab us in the back when things turn sour?

Joash, in my childhood Sunday school stories, was always regarded as a good king. My heart weeps for this good king of Judah. He abandoned the Lord when it was his turn to stand. Instead, he ended badly.

What went wrong?

I think Joash was used to doing what he was told. Joash’s identity was in approval from the people around him, not in approval from the Lord. He didn’t have the personal connection with God, like David did. So he didn’t have the inner strength needed to stand up against his advisors after Priest Jehoiada died.

What about us? Will we risk losing our friends? The anti-God peer pressure in Western culture has never been greater, especially at the adult level. The name calling is more intense than ever. No one wants to be disgraced and labeled a “hater.”

The One Thing that Defeats Peer Pressure

There’s only one thing that will keep us out of this peer pressure trap. Are you ready? Here it is:

Intimacy with Jesus. Personal. You and him. Me and him. Do we have that personal time with Jesus? Yes, we need corporate time just as much, time spent with the body of believers before our Lord. But if we don’t have individual, one-on-one time with God ourselves, we’re just playing church.

Out of intimacy with Jesus, when the apostles were beaten for talking about him and ordered to stop, they said this:

Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than people!” – Acts 5:29

They were called much worse than “haters.” They were publicly whipped. Yet their attitude was different than ours:

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. – Acts 5:41

Others in the New Testament, however, were sadly described by this tragic verse:

Many, even among the leaders, believed in Jesus. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human praise more than praise from God. – John 12:42-43

So what will we choose? One of those last two scriptures will describe your life. Which will it be?

May the church stand up, no longer bullied into silence. May we rejoice when we suffer disgrace for the Name.

May we speak the truth in our water cooler conversations, when it comes up, about the wrong and injustice of racism, abortion, infanticide, physician assisted suicide, euthanasia, forced sterilization, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, sexual promiscuity, and pornography.

And may we always offer love and forgiveness to those trapped in those lifestyles and offer a loving path to freedom. When we don’t stand up for the wrongs of these things, we slam the door of Jesus’ healing in people’s faces.

May we speak the uncompromising truth of God this culture doesn’t know they’re desperate for. But may we do it out of intimacy with Jesus. Not by shouting the loudest. But by serving the most. By loving the longest.

How About You?

Where are you on this journey? Have you tried to spend time with Jesus, but it just falls flat? There could be reasons for that having nothing to do with you, but something in your family line. Email us if that’s you and let’s begin a conversation.

Has your intimacy with Jesus helped you stand your ground, stand up to peer pressure? Or, like Joash, have you been stabbed in the back by your “friends” after compromising for their approval? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share this post if it would bless someone else.

How to Fix Everything

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There is one particular quality that overrides all of our other faults combined. If we just cultivate this one quality in our lives, all our other faults will take care of themselves. Really? Instead of focusing on improving my weaknesses, I can learn this one thing instead, and that’ll take care of everything else? Yep. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

The reverse is also true, though. If we don’t get this one thing down, none of our other virtues matter. All of our other positive qualities will eventually flame-out if we don’t understand and figure out this one thing.

So what is it? Ok. Here it is.

Being Teachable.

God is constantly dorking with our environment. Adjusting things. He intentionally brings seemingly negative circumstances and people into our lives to work stuff out of us. Although I’m personally not fond of this process—it hurts—I must honestly say the seasons of pain in my life have been the seasons of greatest growth. Darn it.

The point is, God is taking us to school. He’s put us here to learn to love each other. Every choice we make is either a choice to love or a choice to fear. Now don’t worry, I’m not getting all drippy and gushy. Sometimes love means confronting someone with the truth they don’t want to hear but need to. And out of his great love for us, God does this for us all the time. In Christian-speak it’s called sanctification. It’s a pain in the neck, but it’s good.

He uses those people who push our buttons and those circumstances we suffer through to tell us what we don’t want to hear but need to. And if we’re teachable and learn the lesson, God deals with all of our faults and shortcomings, one by one.

If we choose to be teachable, God tells us the truth, often through our reactions to difficult people. The process works our stuff out of us. If we choose to not be teachable, we get stuck. We force God to bring harsher people and harsher circumstances to get our attention and learn the lesson. And around the track we go again.

So how do we cultivate being teachable? Here are 3 keys.

1) Talk less, listen more.

We’ve all heard the saying that God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth because we’re supposed to listen twice as much as we talk. So often we get it the other way around. Start paying attention to how much, percentage-wise, you listen vs talk. In most of your conversations, do you talk more or listen more?

Even when we aren’t talking, we often aren’t really listening. We’re waiting to talk. We’re politely waiting for the other person to finish their unimportant thought so we can say something truly important. Instead of just blowing-off and reacting to what was just said, we have an opportunity to honor God and search for what he’s saying to us through that other person. He so often speaks through unrighteous vessels.

It doesn’t mean the other person is right or we have to agree with them. Often what God’s doing is showing us our own heart through our internal reaction to the other person. It’s got nothing to do with whether the other person is right or wrong. That’s between them and God.

If we really listen, both to the other person and to the Holy Spirit, we can often deescalate a volatile situation by responding to the other person with honor instead of reacting out of wounded pride.

That guy! He just pushes my buttons! Teachable people realize our “buttons” are sin in our own heart. God, out of his great love for us, is using that unrighteous person to highlight it. He’s raising a red flag in our consciousness about what he wants to deal with.

2) Pay attention to feedback from more than 1 person.

I grew up with the saying, “When the rest of the world’s wrong and you’re right, it’s probably the other way around.” When we hear things from more than one person, we need to pay attention.

Notice patterns. Never settle for, “That’s just the way I am.” Some people blow-off correction they’ve heard multiple times with this ungodly phrase. But there’s no greater proclamation that someone’s unteachable than those 6 words.

3) Find the kernel of truth in the ugly package.

Truth we get from God through other people is packaged in the other person’s stuff. Sometimes we need to wade through the offense and the other person’s negativity to get at what God’s trying to say to us. Sometimes what’s at the root is a lie from the enemy that we need to blow off. But sometimes there’s a nugget of truth down there that God wants us to mine for.

Teachable people scrape off the coal and find the gold. Or to put it another way, chew the meat, spit out the bones.

So how about you?

Are you teachable? Has it been hard? Are you teachable in some areas, but maybe stuck in others? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share if this would bless someone else.