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Wonderfully Disruptive Spiritual Technology

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I have a friend who had a dream. People were standing in lines waiting to go somewhere, or get into something. Many lines, straight and orderly. Very polite, very systematic. But then some people came along who created quite a disturbance by pulling people out of the lines. They were very adamant about convincing people to get out of the lines. It really upset the systematic flow of things, and made many people in the lines very angry.

The people causing the disturbance were Christians. Because at the front of the lines, where everyone in line was waiting to get to, were demons throwing people off a cliff into hell. Some Christians were snatching people out of the demon’s hands as they were throwing them over the cliff. Some Christians were even diving off the cliff after people. The Christians were creating quite a disruption to the nice, neat, orderly system. They broke it.

The Kingdom of God is like that. It’s disruptive. It upsets the apple cart wherever it goes.

Remember when AOL owned the Internet? We’d all sit for 5 minutes waiting to get online, listening to modem tones, and were happy if the program didn’t have to redial. AOL was the best dial-up Internet service provider in the world. They owned it. Nothing could de-throne them. Except a different technology. DSL and then cable came along, and AOL was dead in a few years.

Remember when we all had landline phones in our houses? I grew up with an egg timer next to the house phone, so we could limit long-distance calls to 3 minutes. Then came cell phones. Now most people no longer have landlines, and many young adults don’t know what “long-distance” even means.

How about TV? ABC, NBC, and CBS used to be the kings. Now they’re all paupers vying for crumbs from the tables of Netflix and Apple TV. New technology changes everything.

Look at how Amazon’s revolutionizing the retail markets. They’ve crushed the brick ‘n’ mortar bookstores and other retail markets. Cyber-Monday is majorly eclipsing Black Friday. And now they’re going after supermarkets. Enjoy Giant and Safeway while you can—here comes Amazon Fresh.

None of that is bad. It’s actually hugely better. I, for one, don’t miss modem tones one little bit. I love my iPhone. And I’m looking forward to Amazon Fresh delivering my groceries to my door in a few years with a drone. It’s just what happens naturally when new technology changes everything.

The Kingdom of God is like that. It changes everything wherever it goes. The old spiritual technology is called religion. The new, disruptive spiritual technology is the Kingdom of God. It overturns the religious apple cart wherever it goes. Literally. Jesus actually physically flipped over the religious tables in the temple (see John 2:13-16 and Matthew 21:12-13).

“Sometimes the greatest opponents to what God is doing on the Earth today are the guardians of what God did yesterday.” – Arthur Burk

If you dare to believe Jesus and chase the passion he’s put on your heart, it will change everything. People will think you’re crazy, but you’ll be in God’s immediate family (Matthew 12:46-50). You’ll find yourself in a perfect storm, but Jesus calms the storm (Mark 4:35-39). You’ll get attacked by poisonous snakes, we all know them, but they will have no power over you (Acts 28:3-6). A thousand will fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it won’t come near you (Psalm 91:7). Quite the adventure!

I am transitioning from a very stable, 30-year career as a successful software engineer to a risky future as an author, blogger, life coach, and online content provider. Am I nuts or what? But I can’t let go of this passion to share with the world the healing God’s given me.

How about you?

How has God disrupted your life? Share it with us in the comments or an email. And if you think this would bless or challenge someone else, please share this post on social media.

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

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As our regular readers know, this blog is all about our true identity in Jesus—the identity God created us to become. But let’s take one giant step backward. How can we understand who we really are in God if we’re confused about who God really is?

In order to understand who we really are, we have to understand who God really is. Sometimes the best way to understand someone is to understand who they’re not. So here’s 10 popular wrong pictures of God, broken down into 3 categories. Do you (or did you) identify with any of these?

False Pictures of an Irrelevant God

The first few false pictures of God let us think God is irrelevant for our lives today. The true motivation for them really goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. We want to decide what’s right and what’s wrong, without some God hanging around having opinions about our behavior. We are still choosing the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil over the Tree of Life.

1) A Myth. So much of our culture believes this, and our children are taught this under the guise of “science.” The truth is, evolution is a myth. Evolution is really bad science. There have been whole books written on this subject, and I don’t have space to go into it here. But evolution violates physics, geology, biology, engineering, statistics – just to name a few sciences that, contrary to what we’ve all been taught, actually contradict evolution. It really takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in God. We did not make ourselves.

2) The Absent Creator. He wound up the world like a top, and now he’s just letting it spin down and couldn’t care less. If I have to admit there must be a God because evolution is such a house-of-cards, at least he doesn’t care about me. I can still be god over my own life. But God created my life and my body. They are ours to steward, not to own. God cares about every aspect of your life. Not as a control freak, but as someone who is rooting for you because he loves you.

3) My Kindly Grandfather. My kind-hearted, but naïve, old grandfather, sitting in his rocking chair on the porch reading his Bible. He’s really nice, but he really doesn’t get life today. The truth is, God gets life today more than we do. And he has the answers. We are so easily deceived by the spirit of the age into thinking truth somehow changed. And in patting ourselves on the back for being so smart, we take our answers, our worldview, and our morality from the media. See Romans 1:22 and 1 Corinthians 1:27-29.

Download the List of
10 False Views of God
on One Page Here.

False Pictures of a God of Performance

These next false pictures of God are all too common. Though we may not realize it on the surface, deep down many of us believe we have to perform, to “straighten up and fly right,” to earn God’s approval, love, and blessing. Often these can be really hard to address because the things we’re doing look so good. They’re good things, but the motivation is to earn love, instead of coming from a place of being loved.

4) Zeus. An angry God, he’s ready to throw lightning bolts as soon as I step out-of-line. In fact, he can’t wait. Sometimes he hurls them just for fun. People blame God for the pain in their lives. They don’t realize he’s crying with them, right there in the middle of it.

People don’t understand God’s judgements come from love, not disappointment or hatred, like a loving parent disciplines a disobedient child. Actually, the opposite of love isn’t hatred—it’s indifference. God has opinions about our behavior because he loves us and wants what’s best for us. He hates our self-destructive behavior the same way the parent of an addict hates the drugs that are destroying their child.

5) A Demanding Parent. No matter how hard I try, I’m never good enough. When God thinks of me, he frowns his disappointment. I have to earn God’s love. He could bless me, but he doesn’t want to. If I can just be good enough, maybe I’ll earn a crumb.

This false picture of God often leads to a scarcity mindset. And it’s so not true. When God thinks of you, he smiles. He rubs his hands together with anticipation and excitement of who he’s created you to be, the same way parents put Christmas presents under the tree before their children wake up on Christmas morning.

6) Santa Claus. He brings me presents if I’m good. He’s making a list. He’s checking it twice. He’s going to find out who’s naughty or nice. Santa-Claus-god doesn’t care about me, just what I do. But that’s so not true. God cares about the real you inside. We are not what we do.

7) Commander-in-Chief. God’s my general and my chain-of-command. I follow the rules to the letter. With. No. Emotional. Attachment. The problem is, God wants an emotional attachment, so desperately that he does reckless things like dying on a cross.

The play/movie Les Misérables is a poignant example of this legalist, false picture of God. The police captain Javert is all about the rules. All his life, he never broke a rule. Rulebreakers will always be rulebreakers and they need the rule enforcers to keep them in line and give them what’s coming to them. The problem is, the convict Jean Valjean is a rulebreaker but spreads mercy and goodness everywhere he goes. That’s not supposed to happen! People can’t really change! But Javert is forced to recognize Jean Valjean’s goodness is better than his own legalism when Jean Valjean spares his life. The story is an amazing contrast between the Kingdom of Religion and the Kingdom of God. Sadly, Javert couldn’t live in a world where mercy triumphs over judgement. (James 2:13)

False Pictures of a God of Entitlement

These false pictures of God are pervasive in our first-world culture where we have more than we could ever want.

8) My ATM. Just like an ATM, I go to him when I need something, and forget about him the rest of the time. After all, isn’t God there, and the church also, to meet my needs? Boy, do we have a surprise coming. That’s totally backward! We exist to meet his needs for worship and fellowship, not the other way around.

9) My Insurance Salesman. Thanks for salvation, Jesus, see you in Heaven. Got my fire insurance. As long as I keep up the premiums by going to church periodically, I’m covered. The problem here is that Jesus didn’t die on a cross to bring us into the Kingdom of God in the sweet bye-and-bye. He died to bring his Kingdom into our lives now. Right here, right now.

10) My Savior but not My Lord. Jesus forgives all my sins so I can live however I want and still go to heaven. Such a deal! He’s my Savior, I said the sinner’s prayer, once, sometime a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away. But he really doesn’t expect me to live in holiness and purity, does he? Yes, actually he does. And his heart breaks when we harm ourselves by living like the world. We nail him to that cross all over again. Jesus is not really our Savior if he’s not also our Lord. He comes as a package deal.

All of these false pictures grieve the heart of God. He wants his children to know the real Jesus.

The True Picture of the Living God—My Lover-King

This is who Jesus died on the cross to be. This is what his resurrection made possible. My Lover-King, the essence of my universe, the number one person in my life. He’s just crazy about me, and I wish I could do more to please him. His smile makes my spirit soar, and when we’re together, he smiles all the time. We are so in love. His love crashed in and changed my life. Like Lucy with Aslan, in the picture above.

Think about that for a minute. What would it be like to live in the ecstasy of that kind of lover-close, intimate relationship with God? Lover-close with God? Crazy, huh? Do you think it might change how we live?

So what’s your picture of God? Tell us in the comments. And please share this post if it would help someone else.

Download the List of
10 False Views of God
on One Page Here.

A Tale of Two Sons

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This post is based about Jesus’ parable of The Prodigal Son.

If you’re not familiar with it, read it first here.

Here’s my paraphrase of this story:

Younger son wants his due.
He wants it now.
It’s his just right.
Just ask him, he’ll tell you.

Father knows best.
But consents to give worst because
He knows younger son needs to discover for himself.
Discover the poison of his own desires.
Discover the selfishness of his own heart.
Discover that he’s hurting himself.
Discover he had it best with his Father.

So Father gives and waits and watches.
And waits and watches and waits and watches.
Younger son repents in the pig slop.
Father flies to him and restores.
Yes! Father’s heart cry is heard and fulfilled.

Older son wants his due.
He wants it now.
It’s his earned right.
Just ask him, he’ll tell you.

Father knows best.
Entreats his son who does his work
To also have his heart.
No! Father’s heart cry unheard by a deaf heart.

Who’s the main character in this story, The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)? Which son is this story really about? The younger son, whose rebellion we so readily identify with? Or the older son, too stuck in religion, too busy doing his father’s work to have his father’s heart?

Neither son! Trick question! This story’s about the Father and his heart for both of his sons. The Father is the main character.

The Younger Son Trapped in Rebellion

The younger son didn’t know who he was. He was rebellious and selfish, without love for his Father. His inheritance is what he would get when his Father died. Asking for it while his Father was still alive was saying, “I wish you were dead! You’re dead to me!”

He was deceived by living in the pleasure of the moment. It took a hard crash in the pig slop for him to come to his senses. To the younger son, the Father says, “Son, your sin has separated you from me and it’s breaking my heart. But I’m waiting. And when you turn, I’ll carry you back.”

That’s where the analogy breaks down, because God does more than just wait. In the movie Furious Love by Darren Wilson, Associate Pastor Kris Vallotton from Bethel Church in Redding, CA, describes God’s passionate love like this:

I’ve watched that over and over and over in people’s lives, where they go, “I don’t like God anymore.” Something terrible happens in their life, maybe their spouse dies or they lose a child, or all the crazy stories we hear, and they go, “That’s God’s fault, I blame God for that.” And they walk away. But God goes, “I still love you. I still care about you. And I will set up circumstances so that you will have to try very hard to not love me back. Because, in this marriage, I’m the bridegroom and you’re the bride. And in this marriage, I’m the one pursuing you. I’m the male in this relationship; I’m the pursuer. And I love you way more than you love me. You can try to reject me and play hard to get, but you have no idea how hard it’s going to be to not love me.”

God doesn’t just wait. He meddles. Constantly.

The Older Son Trapped in Religion

The older son didn’t know who he was, either. He was a loyal employee, with no more love for his Father than his younger brother. He was trying to earn by hard work what he already had by inheritance. And he wasn’t longing to celebrate with his Father, but with his buddies, deceived by the promise of earning future pleasure.

To the older son, the Father says, “Son, everything I have is yours and always has been. You can celebrate with me anytime you want. I am so here for you. But you’ve been too preoccupied doing my work to have my heart. I would rather have intimacy with you than 100 acres more crops.”

God is looking for lovers.

So often we minister out of our wounding, rather than out of intimacy with the Father. Ministering out of wounding, we can pursue the wrong calling and miss what he really had for us. How tragic to have spent a lifetime sacrificing and pursuing the wrong calling, constantly wondering why nothing’s working!

God is looking for lovers. It’s only in experiencing the ecstasy of intimacy relating to Jesus and the Father’s heart that we know who we really are and what we’re really for.

Your Turn

Do you want his heart? Will you give him yours? Which son have you been? Tell us your story in the comments, and share this post if it would bless others.

3 Conversations We as the Church Need to Have

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Church is the place where we come together as a people and celebrate all that God has done for us. Yes, we celebrate our salvation, but the cross was meant to be the beginning of our freedom. God has done miraculous things in all of our lives and continues to do so. Janet and I have received tremendous healing from the Lord, and we know many others who have as well. I bet you have, too. It makes sense to find a lot of happy, joyful people in church. As it should be.

But we shouldn’t only find happy, joyful people in church and, truth be told, none of us are happy and joyful all the time. Janet and I still have significant pain in our lives, and I bet you do, too.

Yes, our joy is rooted in who Jesus is, so it’s deeper than our circumstances. Yes, he imparts supernatural joy in the middle of horrendous circumstances. I’ve experienced his peace in the midst of tremendous pain, in circumstances that should’ve been anything but peaceful. But sometimes he doesn’t bring joy. Not always; not all the time. You can’t box him in or predict what he’s going to do.

What do you do when you pray, when you worship, when you read your Bible, when you’ve done everything right, and you still feel depressed? What if you still have lustful thoughts? Even suicidal thoughts? What if you still feel the pull toward the old addiction?

We shouldn’t feel like we have to pretend we’re happy and joyful when we’re not. We all continue to go through tough stuff. Jesus promised us we’d have trouble as long as we’re in this fallen world (see John 16:33).

What happens all too often is we sit in church thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be full of joy like all these people all around me? Just look at all these happy people entering into God’s presence. Why does God come through for everyone else but not for me?”

Want in on the big secret? Many, many other people in the room are thinking the exact same thing. And we probably all have thought that at some point.

What if you’re grieving a loss in your life? Maybe a loved one? Even if they’re saved, it’s never easy. What about a child? What about a marriage? A job loss? A home?

What if you’re caught in a mess of your own making? What if your addiction is crashing your life? What if you’re in a crisis pregnancy? What if you’re going to go to jail, maybe a DUI, shoplifting, drugs, or domestic abuse?

If you can’t go to church when you’re in crisis, where can you go?

Some churches are not safe places to be when you’re hurting. They question your faith if you show any signs of human frailty.

There are conversations we as the church need to have that we’re not having. Let’s go there.

1) Depression

Why are some chemical imbalances acceptable in the church today while others are not? No one would tell a diabetic not to take their insulin. But do we look down on people who need medication for depression as “unspiritual”? Why do we expect God to heal depression but not diabetes?

Everyone is different. We can’t fit people into formulas. Sometimes depression needs counseling, inner healing, and/or deliverance to address the root causes. But what about the people who do all that and still feel suicidal? More counseling? Maybe, maybe not. What’s God doing in that person? Sometimes the person needs medication to be leveled out enough to receive inner healing or deliverance. Sometimes it’s a legitimate chemical imbalance just like diabetes.

I’m not that person and I can’t tell the difference, so who am I to judge? I think I’ll leave that one up to God, and just be their friend, brother in Christ, and let them know how loved they are.

The sticky wicket comes when our method of choice, be it counseling, inner healing, deliverance, or what have you, doesn’t work. Do we blame the person? You don’t have enough faith! You just need to embrace your healing! How dare you break my perfect formula! That’s an injustice that needs to stop. When things that should work don’t work, it just means God’s not done and wants to do something even better in the person. We need to encourage them, not shame them.

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around people who suffer from depression?

2) Post-Abortive

One in three women has had an abortion. Of those, 70% identify as regular church attenders. Janet and I volunteer at our local crisis pregnancy center here in Fredericksburg, VA. The ones that break our heart the most are the ones who say, “Yes, I’m pro-life, but I have to get an abortion because I can’t tell my church.” The shame is too great. This is an injustice that needs to stop.

And it’s not just a women’s issue. Do the math. One in three men has fathered an aborted child. Abortion cuts to the heart of a man’s identity as protector just like it does the heart of woman’s identity as nurturer.

Is it possible that our judgmental attitude and lack of acceptance of girls in crisis pregnancies, especially our own, is what’s funding Planned Parenthood more than Congress? Are we the ones keeping them in business with our shaming and religiosity?

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around unmarried, pregnant young women? How do we act around post-abortive people? Is it safe for people in your church to admit they’ve had an abortion? How would you react?

3) Sexual Purity

Our girls in our churches are getting pregnant with our boys in our churches because we’re not talking about sex in our churches. Sex is part of life, and we should be talking about it in church regularly, from the pulpit, not just in Youth Group. Our silence is letting the media teach our teens and young adults about sex. They’re getting a very skewed, unhealthy, lying, but very slick, deceptive and appealing, message.

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

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around teens and talk about sex?

Are You Willing?

… to have the hard conversation?

… to have the uncomfortable conversation?

… to be friends with that person?

… to let those people in your church?

… to admit that we don’t have our act together all the time?

… to come clean about our own doubts and fears?

… to, in vulnerability, be Jesus to the ones who need him the most?

Who knows, if we as the church are willing to do that, we just might find ourselves changing the world.

Please share this post on social media if you agree with starting this conversation.

Why Denominations Are a Good Thing

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“Silly Catholics, don’t they know he’s not on that cross anymore?” I smugly thought to myself, when I noticed the crucifix up on the wall. I had just gotten to the room that would be my home for the next week. About 2005 or so, I took time off from work and went to a monastery to fast and pray for a week. It was an incredible time of closeness to God, but that’s another story.

Anyway, I had just gotten to my room, noticed the crucifix on the wall, and my protestant pride was showing. You see, we protestants use empty crosses, to emphasize Jesus’ resurrection. I thought my theological superiority was a no-brainer, but the Holy Spirit rebuked me sharply with three words.

“Don’t do that,” he said in my thoughts in his loving, but firm, way. He wasn’t being mean or anything, but he wasn’t going to stand for it. Over the years I’ve learned to discern the Holy Spirit’s voice, and this was definitely him.

I was shocked. “What are you talking about, Lord?”

Then the Holy Spirit gave me a download about denominations. The movie The Passion of the Christ had just come out. I loved that movie for a couple reasons. First, Hollywood refused to make it, and Mel Gibson had to go to Italy to make it with the Italian film industry. But most of all, I knew several back-slidden Christians who re-dedicated their lives to the Lord directly because of that movie, watching what Jesus went through for them. And it was an incredibly well-done, historically and spiritually accurate movie, IMHO.

The Holy Spirit told me, “Protestants could not have made that movie. You do not understand my suffering at the level that the Catholics do. Yes, you understand it, but I have given the Catholics a much deeper understanding of it than I’ve given Protestants. In the same way, I’ve given Protestants a deeper understanding of my resurrection than I’ve given to Catholics. They understand the resurrection too, but I’ve given you Protestants a deeper understanding of it.

“You see, Dave, I’m infinite. I am too big to be completely understood by any single group of finite human beings. So I’ve revealed different parts of myself more deeply to different denominations. You need to spend your time learning from each other, from the things they understand about me that you do not, rather than bickering with each other about what you understand that they do not.”

Wow. That rocked my world. I repented for my judgements in my heart toward Catholics, and even toward other Protestant denominations I have differences with.

Since then, regardless of what theological differences I have with certain groups, when I’m with them, I try to find what they understand about God that I don’t. And learn from them. I’m coming to appreciate crucifixes.

Now certainly there are a certain set of core beliefs, “the main and plain,” that you really can’t call yourself “Christian” without adhering to. Janet and my list is at the bottom of our About Us page. I’m taking it granted here we all agree on those basic tenants of Christianity.

But beyond that, I don’t think theological differences are necessarily a bad thing, as long as they don’t cause us to judge or break fellowship with each other. We can agree to disagree about certain things and that’s ok. But if we’re going to fellowship with each other side-by-side in heaven, why can’t we do so now?

One thing we love about volunteering at our local pro-life crisis pregnancy center is all the different people from all different denominations coming together in unity around a common mission—saving and transforming lives. It’s a reflection of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.

What do you think? Have you had experiences where other denominations blessed you when you weren’t expecting it? We’d love to hear that story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share if you think this would bless someone else.

Generosity Trademarks the Kingdom of God

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Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to the wind: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) His point was that, just like the wind, you can’t physically see the Kingdom of God, but you can see its effects. You can see the marks of where it’s been. I believe generosity is one of the key marks of the Kingdom of God.

As Christians, we should be the most generous people on the planet.

As Americans, as a country, we probably are. I don’t have exact figures (or any figures) in front of me, but I know our government, which is becoming less and less Christian all the time, still gives away billions of dollars in foreign aid every year. America is one of the most, if not the most, generous countries on the planet. This is the mark of a country that was founded on Kingdom of God principles.

And it’s not just the government. Some of the most effective aid organizations in the world were founded by and are run by American private citizens. Crisis Response International (my personal favorite), Not for Sale, Mercy Ships, Goodwill, The United Way, just to name a few, are amazingly effective charitable organizations providing help across the world where it’s needed most. They provide dollars, medical supplies and services, food, rescue, and labor for rebuilding after disasters (not to mention the Gospel). They have their roots in the Kingdom of God and their generosity is making lasting impacts around the world.

That’s great, but what about the rest of us? Can we be generous right here at home, every day?

I think we can. For example, waiters and waitresses should be fighting to work Sunday afternoons, when the Christians come for lunch after church. We should be the biggest tippers on the planet. (If you’re in the restaurant industry, please leave a comment about whether this is so or not.) A standard tip is 18%. I tip at least 20%, honestly because the math is easier, not because I’m being generous. I compute 10% in my head by moving the bill’s decimal point, double it, and round up. I’m working on tipping 30%, because I want to be generous. It’s hard though, because it gets expensive. Generosity is sacrificial, that’s why it marks the presence of the Kingdom of God.

Janet and I recently experienced an amazing weekend of generosity. We went to a writer’s conference, Tribe Conference 2017, in Franklin, TN, just south of Nashville, that exemplified this concept. Tribe Writers is a program founded and run by best-selling author Jeff Goins that teaches creatives how to get their message out there (and make a living at it) in this amazing new digital renaissance we’re living in. This was the first time Janet and I attended the annual conference.

What an amazing experience! I’ve been to lots of professional and personal conferences, and I can honestly say Tribe Conference 2017 was the most generous conference I have ever been to.

Every single speaker (and breakout session leader) gave away something of value. Not just run-of-the-will lead-magnets that you expect to give away, but premium products either free or at significant discounts. Some made exclusive content just for the conference attendees on hidden pages on their websites. Their generosity was really overwhelming.

Mr. Goins brought a young writer, Natalie Brenner, on the stage to tell the story of getting her book, This Undeserved Life, published. It’s her story about how God shows up in the middle of grief. Her book gives Christians permission to grieve, which is really important because unfortunately I know stories when the church has not.

The book just recently came out, and she’d sold a few hundred copies. Mr. Goins asked everyone there to buy her book, on the spot, which practically all of us did (Janet and I bought two). He doubled her book sales in 60 seconds, and put her on track to becoming a best-selling author. It was definitely a class act. He didn’t have to do that. She certainly didn’t expect it and was floored. It was a blessing to watch the effects of unexpected generosity.

(Yes, the link he gave us to buy the book was an affiliate link, meaning he got a small commission. But those proceeds were used to buy Natalie’s book for anyone in the room who couldn’t afford it, so he funneled it back into book sales for her.)

This was not a Christian conference. It was about writing, marketing, and platform building. But the generosity of the team, the speakers, Mr. Goins himself, and the attendees during the conference was unbelievable. Everyone, speakers and attendees, would stop to give you personal help on wherever you were stuck—the technology, the writing, whatever. Although not overtly Christian, it was obvious that many are Christians, because their generosity overflowed. The mark of the Kingdom of God.

Disclaimer: Janet and I are in the Tribe Writers Pro program, a mastermind group that has helped us significantly in building our platform. However, none of the links in this post are affiliate links. We’re getting no monetary value from telling you about Tribe 2017. It’s just our most recent example of seeing unexpected generosity in action. It was really an amazing experience seeing Kingdom of God principles play out in the marketplace.

The big take-away here is this. Their over-the-top generosity made us want to go again next year. We were proud to be part of such a giving community. Everyone wants to hang out with generous people. Generosity makes the gospel attractive. People may argue with your theology, but they can’t argue with the help or the undeserved kindness you’ve given them. It’s why Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35)

Generosity is love with skin on it.

What about you? Have you benefitted from extreme generosity? Have you given it? How can we be generous in the everyday stuff? Tell us the story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share on social media if you think this post would bless someone else.

The Kingdom of God Is Not a Buffet

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Ever order a medium rare filet mignon, and it comes out warm-red-center perfect, but with mushrooms on it? What made them think putting fungus on my perfect steak was a good idea?!? At least I can scrape off the mushrooms—Janet will eat them. But when I order Jesus’ resurrection power off the menu of my life, I can’t scrape off the suffering God uses to bring me that power.

The Kingdom of God is not a buffet. We can’t take an extra scoop of God’s power in our lives and just pass on the suffering. The power and the glory come through the suffering. If you’re like me, you’re going, “Really, God? What’s up with that?” But Paul said it best:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:10-11)

Do you see the mystery in these verses? In scripture “know” means “experience”. So experiencing the power of Jesus’ resurrection in our lives is tied to sharing in his suffering. Hmmm. Not my idea of a good time. The suffering part, that is.

But I want Jesus’ resurrection power in my life. In my family. Don’t you? I want to see miracles in my life. I want to see my family members healed when they’re sick. I want to just speak and have the natural world obey me. I want to have an impact on this world. A Kingdom impact. I want to live who he created me to be.

There’s just one catch. Experiencing Jesus’ resurrection power is tied to sharing in his suffering. And Paul uses a very interesting word to describe that sharing. Fellowship. It’s in the suffering, not in the miracles, where we experience fellowship with Jesus. That seems really counter-intuitive to me, but thank God—that’s where we need him the most.

Actually, we could pass on the suffering, or try to. And we will live very mediocre, powerless, “safe” lives, and a lot of people do. Or. Or. Or. We could, just maybe, dare to trust God. Chin up, bear up well under whatever suffering and pain he brings us through, and come out the other side living a wild, Kingdom-of-God adventure like we never even dreamed possible.

What do you think? I’ll take the wild ride. Will you? Does this resonate? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email. We want to hear from you. And please share on social media if this blessed you or made you think. (Click the share buttons below.)