Ipods, State Fair Rides, and What to do with Your Self

The fall after I graduated, I was working for IV at Virginia Commonwealth University--and perpetually feeling stressed out. I was in over my head, working at a commuter campus and getting to know students and over-functioning as I tried to figure out how to do my new job.

One weekend that fall, I went back to UNC to visit some old friends--it was oasis-like: laughter, re-telling old stories, inside jokes, and new memories.

I was sharing this with my supervisor afterward, Kim Green, and she made a comment that has stuck with me for fourteen years: "It's great to be with the kind of friends that allow you to forget yourself."

This struck me because of course I've grown up in a culture that says it's about finding and expressing yourself, not forgetting yourself. In fact, I would have said that I was finally around people who allowed me to be myself.

But the reality is that her description was much more true. In the stress of my first semester in ministry, I was super-self-conscious. I was hyper aware of how I was or wasn't fitting in, how I was or wasn't being successful.

And it was, indeed, a tremendous gift to forget myself for a weekend and just be with people who I loved and who I knew loved me.

Several years ago Apple developed a personal MP-3 player to give the old Sony Walkman a much-needed face-lift. They called it the Ipod. And ever since the explosive success of the portable music player, Apple and everyone else has spent a small fortune finding new accessories that they can sell us that are all about the "I," from Ipads to Iphones to ILife to ICal.

It's all about tending to the very hungry "I" that strangely seldom experiences true satisfaction for very long. In our overly-self-conscious age where image is everything, the I must be tended to and worshiped.

We cannot forget ourselves, even if it would be good for our souls. It's not good for business.

I was thinking about all of this yesterday as I came across this excerpt from a story by George MacDonald:

I sickened at the sight of Myself; how should I ever get rid of the demon? The same instant I saw the one escape: I must offer it back to its source--commit it to Him who made it. I must live no more from it but from the source of it; seek to know nothing more of it than He gave me to know by His presence therein...

What flashes of self-consciousness might cross me, should be God's gift, not of my seeking, and offered again to Him in every new self-sacrifice.

Elsewhere MacDonald writes that God has given us a self in order that we might have something to offer back to God.

As I was praying over these thoughts in my journal later that morning, I considered an image of my kids at the state fair. They love the rides. When the gate-keeper at the ride opens that door to let them in, they thoughtlessly hand over the three tickets on their way through for the joy set before them.

What if my heart and mind and imagination were so fixed on the joy of the Land of the Trinity that I would gladly and heedlessly hand over this "self" on the way in? You mean all I have to do is check this coat at the door in order that I might roam free in the vast, undiscovered continents of grace and love and beauty and truth and wonder? Why would I even hesitate?

But of course, I do hesitate. The appetites of the self speak loudly and I wrestle with fears and anxieties and pride and desires. Some of these have kernels of God-given-stuff to them. Others are destructive and evil and must be killed off altogether.

There's a gift in God's invitation to die to ourselves daily. The demands of the self make for a poor life-compass. I spend too much time obeying my thirst rather than obeying God. My life is the poorer for it.

My prayer, then, is that this thing God has given me called the self might be released into his care. That I might entrust all of it to Him. And in so doing, all of me might be raised back up into newness of life where I forget myself for much of the time, delightedly so, and tend to myself only as the Lord would direct me.

Rio's Separation Anxiety and Learning Holy Celebration

Our third year of marriage, my wife Kelly and I got a dog. He was a used dog, we got him from an animal rescue. We named him Rio.

Some of our friends at that stage in their marriage were getting dogs to prepare them for kids. We should have had kids first to prepare us for the dog.

Rio was a great, great dog when we were home. But when we left, he freaked out. He would panic-bark for hours, shred curtains, trash, books, and generally make a nuisance of himself. Our neighbors in our apartment loved him, of course.

Rio had separation anxiety. And we tried to train him, medicate him, reward him and punish him, but nothing worked. Eventually we had a kid and we just couldn't handle a high-maintenance dog. I still remember crying as I dropped him off at an animal rescue.

The core problem of our humanity is that we are born separated from God. And all of us have separation anxiety, we just don't call it that.

And rather than running around panic-barking for hours, we scurry around frantically trying to order our lives so that they make sense to us. We chase after whatever we call "success" in order to silence the disquiet in our souls.

The worst of it is when we actually achieve whatever it is we think looks like success at any given moment. Because the original temptation was "you will be like God" and temporary successes reinforce that illusion.

What drives us more often and more desperately to God--success or failure? The biblical history of Israel and a couple centuries of church history show that God's people become self-enamored when they achieve and God-dependent when they're desperate. Come to think of it, my own life shows much the same pattern.

And so as Christ-followers, we must learn the discipline of God-ward celebration. We must learn to grow up into turning towards God with joyful celebration in the aftermath of a 'win' as deeply and desperately as we turn to God in the midst of dire straights.

Rio never got over his separation anxiety. This side of the grave, neither will we--even those of us who know Christ do not experience the same closeness we had in the Garden before the Great and Terrible Exchange.

But we can become aware of how our separation anxiety drives us to unhealthy lives. And we can begin to grow up into the discipline of celebrating success with the God who is reigns forever in victory.

The Conductor, The Life Coach, and Moving Beyond Responsible Disasters

So yesterday we talked about Sir Whitmore's keys to coaching greatness from his book "Coaching for Performance:" awareness and responsibility (all with a cool British accent that I'm hopefully presuming that he has).

The goal of the coach is to increase awareness and responsibility by asking patient questions to help the coachee grow up into these two traits in their work and/or personal life.

Check and check. These are both good things. Jesus (and the rest of the New Testament along with him) uses plenty of language that would go under the headings of "awareness" and "responsibility."

But this whole humanistic unleashing of the infinitely glorious goodness of each human being that's locked away and encumbered by the evils of society, parents and religious upbringing through the power of awareness and responsibility just doesn't satisfy me. Even though these are good things. And I've been trying to figure out why.

I think it's because I've known people who are aware and responsible who are still disasters. They're over-aware, over-responsible, and can't do a thing about it. They're caught up in guilt about the past, anxiety for the future, and a combination of a need to "be responsible" all the while remaining stuck in all kinds of fears that they have little to no ability to do anything about.

And then there's stuff in us that just won't go away, isn't there? Thoughts, feelings, moods, dark dreams, shadows, memories. Thin humanism with all its feeble attempts at wishing away a core nature that is tainted by sin just can't deal with both ends of us: the glory of our humanity and the depths of our darkness.

Ultimately, awareness and responsibility cannot bring full healing to our souls. They are good things, but they are means to a further end and not the end itself.

Not the least reason, of course, being that awareness and responsibility cannot address our most fundamental problem: separation from God. If awareness and responsibility were all that the Scripture taught, we'd be hopeless.

Awareness and responsibility must spring from and be boundaried by a larger story, a larger framework: forgiveness and grace are ours in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Only in Christ can we be aware of all of our junk (past and present) and not have it condemn us. Only in Christ can we be fully responsible moral agents as well as have the power to be changed into repentant saints.

Whitmore offers a beautiful illustration of all our sub-personalities being directed by the deepest, most central "I" like a conductor over a symphony. But in reality, that "I" cannot help but be enmeshed in all those sub-personalities--many of whom will remain mysteries to even the most self-aware of us until the day that we die.

The real goal is to hand the baton over to Jesus. To allow him to conduct the symphony of sub-personalities and to ultimately win over the deepest "I" that is our truest self. That "I" who is made in God's image, is fallen from God, and who struggles always with sin and pride and self-defeat.

That "I" is rabidly loved by a perfect and good Father, redeemed by His Son, and empowered by His Holy Spirit into new creation that leads to new-ness of life. That "I" and all of his or her sub-personalities are no mystery to God as they are to themselves. God who made us, knows our fragmented natures, and is eager to redeem all of it.

And I'm grateful to Sir Whitmore for helping me to understand how awareness and responsibility are two key steps in that redemption. And I'm even more grateful that those aren't the final words in what it means to finally get there.

Life Coach Jesus, Part 1

In yesterday's Grab-Bag post I briefly touched on a book that I'm finishing up called "Coaching for Performance." In it, Sir John Whitmore (it'd be much easier to read if I could conjure up his British accent) argues that the key to developing people is a coaching approach that taps into human potential and unleashes it.

Whitmore boils the coaches' job down to a couple of core concepts. The job of the coach is to raise the coach-ees awareness and personal responsibility.

Awareness, Whitmore argues, is imperative. People must be made aware of their own inclinations, made aware of group dynamics, made aware of goals and desires of the individual as well as the group/team/company.

People must grow most of all in self-awareness. Towards the end of the book, Whitmore gets super-deep into the psychology of coaching.

He argues that a good coach understands that all of us have multiple sub-personalities. And that the coach helps the "I" underneath all those sub-personalities eventually act as the conductor of the orchestra. The fully integrated "I" stands over and above all the potential warring personalities and voices (say, the voice that tells you to get out of bed early to exercise v. the voice that tells you to hit the snooze bar) and brings them into harmony.

And this, of course, leads us into the responsibility piece. The coachee must not only be aware of the multiple personalities at work in his psyche, but must also take personal responsibility to master them.

If this combination of awareness and responsibility is the key to awakening a healthy, motivated, fully functional human being/employee, then it's obvious that the old top-down methods of high-control in management are utterly useless in Whitmore's understanding.

If the employee only does exactly what they're told because they're afraid of consequences, it does nothing to increase their awareness of a situation or their ability to fix it OR of their sense of responsibility to take the initiative to do the fixing.

It would seem that this talk about awareness and responsibility lines up rather nicely with Jesus' talk in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus goes to great lengths to shake us up out of our self-righteous stupor--to make us aware of the sin at work in all of our hearts. And he calls us to go to great lengths to own the corrective: gouging one's eyes out, for example.

And yet all of this talk of awareness and responsibility, as helpful as it might be, ultimately can't really deal with our most essential issues in life. But at this point, this post is too long already.

Bowling Alone Meets Grass, Starbucks, and the Trinity

In the mid-1990's Robert Putnam wrote an essay called "Bowling Alone." In the essay he argued that social-capital was declining as it pertained to typical civic organizations. Per the title, he cites that bowling has increased by 20-percent but participation in bowling leagues has declined.

Putnam cites all sorts of possible reasons: double-income families, suburban sprawl, technology, and other now-familiar evils of modern living.

But at the same time as Putnam was writing, a number of things were about to explode to counter-act these isolating tendencies. Among them, Starbucks.

What happened in the late-90's and early 2000's was the explosion of neutral social connecting and networking cites that were more accessible and more multi-use than the classic bar (think "Cheers"). You could do a business meeting at a Starbucks or meet friends there after work.

Even as various technological and social shifts were occurring to press people into isolation, our innate need to be relational re-invented itself.

Like grass that fights through a crack in the cement sidewalk, our hard-wiring for community will almost always push through any circumstances.

God is a relationship: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

When God creates people "made in his own image" that means, in part, that we're hard-wired for relationships, too. This is expressed through everything from Starbucks (now Panera) to Facebook and Twitter to the explosion of mega-churches like Saddleback or Northpoint whose growth was driven by their commitment to small group ministries.

We've gotta' connect. We were made for it. We're made in God's image and we must express that. Because we're fallen creatures, it often comes out in unhealthy ways.

So take a look at your own impulses for community. Healthy? Muted? Co-dependent tendencies? Eeking out in funky ways? I'd encourage you to take prayerful inventory and see if it might be time for a Starbucks run or to join a small group.

Or maybe just to grab a friend and join a bowling league.

Anxiety & Star Wars Themed Weddings

The weeks before I got married, people kept asking me if I was ready to get married. What, are you kidding me? No one's ever ready to get married (even if you're a guy fortunate enough to con your fiancee into a Star Wars themed wedding).

All you can know is that it's probably going to be harder and better than you can imagine.

But I was anxious. And like most of us, I attributed my anxiety to the changing situation. We tend to blame anxiety on circumstances.

But the truth of the matter is that our anxiety is a combination of the situation and our own estimation of our ability to meet what's demanded of us in a given situation.

So I was anxious about marriage in the weeks leading up to my wedding day. But twelve years in, marriage itself isn't a source of anxiety at all. I used to be anxious about being a dad. Now, the category "dad" doesn't generate any particular fear--but I am anxious about being a dad of teenagers some day.


So anxiety is a product of situation plus our own estimation of our resources to handle the situation.

Paul is wrestling with this at various points in the Scriptures. And we get a glimpse of how he handles it in 2 Corinthians 2:

thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and
through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For
we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who
are perishing...

Who is sufficient for these things?

There is it--the question that underlies all our anxiety, whether we are capable of naming it or not. Who is sufficient for this situation, this class, parenting these children, getting this work done, dealing with this family dysfunction?

Perhaps someone out there is, but I'm not sure it's me.


And here is where our culture tries so hard to make you feel good about you being you. There's billions of dollars in pills and seminars and books to be spent on trying to make you feel good enough so that these questions don't plague you any more.


And sometimes those pills or seminars or books can be helpful. But all of them are at best impartial unless they land in the same general ballpark where Paul lands:

as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak
Christ.

Paul is sincere. He is not one of those guys trying to make money peddling religious goods and services (people he separates himself throughout the letter). And here we find resonance with the therapeutic bent that rules our culture. Sincerity matters. If you're being sincere, that's worth celebrating.

But Paul doesn't stop there. He is sent by God and he stands and does his work in the sight of God. All his confidence and peace comes not from within but from without. It starts in God and is held together in God and it ends in the proclamation of God.


And I would contend that while Paul articulates Christ in a specific way as an apostle that you might not in cube world or in the classroom, your work could (and should) proclaim Christ in its excellence, thoughtfulness, and intentionality in doing it as one who stands in the presence of God himself.

Who is sufficient for these things? Here's the deal: you aren't.

But in Christ, you are one sent from God and who stands in God's presence. And his purposes in your work is that Christ might be proclaimed. And he's more committed to all that in your parenting and marriage and school work and lame reports that are due than you are.


And if you can put God in the middle of this picture and take yourself our of the middle of it, you just might find anxiety passes and peace that passes understanding starts to take root.

Unless you're the one that didn't really want that Star Wars-themed wedding.

Ten Weeks In and Experiencing Extrovert De-Tox

So I'm a good ten-ish weeks into my new job and I've had some excellent moments already. It's encouraging to see the staff I work with do good work. It's fun to come alongside and brainstorm and encourage and get to know them and their students.

And it's been really cool knocking on some doors at campuses where there's no InterVarsity work and seeing what might open up. One campus in particular has seemed to pop with potential and I'm hopeful that we might be able to plant there in the fall.

But there's been some challenges, too. Being the flaming extrovert that I am, I have missed the crowds. I'm getting some great one-on-one time with my staff. But that's not quite the same thing as being at a large group with 300 students. I always came away energized by large group--even when it was bad.

This has led me to some good reflection. God has made me as I am--he knows how I'm wired.

But that wiring needs significant redemption. I can become addicted to the crowds. So part of the blessing of this job change for me is the move to a slightly more solitary job in order that I might not become addicted to the crowd.

In other words, as a a part of these first several weeks of my new job I'm going through de-tox. Love the crowd too much, you can become addicted to the crowd--you can start to use the crowd to prop yourself up rather than being free to bless the crowd. Jesus loves me and the people around me too much to allow me to live out my addiction for too long.

I will always love people--the more the merrier in my book. But my hope and prayer is that as I submit myself to the Lord in new ways in my new position that I'll be a healthier extrovert because I have cultivated that introvert side. I hope to be more fully human and allow others to be human, too.

So that's the first few weeks in the new gig. I look forward to seeing what God has next.

Fight Club: How Being Brad Pitt Revealed My Discontent (Part 3)

Quick background for those of you who are new to Piebald Life: I've spent the past fourteen years working in campus ministry with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I spent nine years working at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va and the past five at UNC-Chapel Hill, which is where I got on this IV merry-go-round to begin with as a student.

This summer I've taken a new position with InterVarsity as an Area Director for the Central Carolinas. Instead of working with students, I'm working with campus staff who work with students at UNC-Charlotte, Davidson College, Elon University and UNC-Chapel Hill.

This transition has gone relatively smoothly in terms of the outward circumstances: my first big "test" was a four-day meeting with all ten of the staff that I supervise from all four campuses--it went about as spectacularly as I could have dreamed.

Like any newbie, I'm learning my way around the parts of the job that are ne--like understanding insurance and employment forms. And I've enjoyed talking with each of my staff weekly and being a sort of consultant as they gear up for the start of the fall.

All this left me wondering a couple of weeks ago: why am I so churned up internally?

I was talking about this at Fight Club a couple of weeks ago-- the name of the guys small group that meets at my house every Sunday night. One of the wives coined the name and I figure that since I lead it that makes me Brad Pitt. Definitely Brad Pitt.

I was verbally processing my inner-angst when I stumbled upon a realization. In my new position, I do not yet know what "success" looks like. Over the past fourteen years, I've more or less developed my own schema for how to measure success: X numbers of students involved or seniors at senior night sharing how they've grown and matured while in college.

Having clear pictures of what it means for me to be successful are very important to me. I am realizing that all the more as they are taken away.

And what I'm realizing is that most of that was deeply unhealthy anyway. And so I've been internally angst-ridden because in the transition the Lord has removed the un-healthy sources of my identity.

This is, of course, a gift if I can get there emotionally. To be free from the tyranny of numbers and of the pressure to perform in order to feel that I am a worthwhile human being would be a tremendously wide-open place to live.

And soon I'll replace those old measurements of success with new measurements of success, and I will again be in the same place of fighting those same battles.

But in the interim I have a tremendous opportunity for personal growth: to be stripped of my external props and to lean into Jesus alone for my identity is what I am meant to do.

The Fight Club realization a couple of weeks ago was a real turning point for me as I'm transitioning into my new job. There's some clarity about what this season is supposed to be about for me in terms of my walk with the Lord and what it means for me to serve faithfully as I continue to learn my new ropes and care for my staff.

And in the mean time, maybe it's time to dust off the old Fight Club DVD and see if there's any more spiritual lessons to be learned...my guess is that there's probably not.

Sources of Our Dis-Content Part 2: Over-Staying the Sell-By Date

Yesterday I posted about a common source of our discontent: living with our eyes fixed on the greener grass in the rear-view mirror.

Today I want to talk about a different source of our discontent: holding onto things that are supposed to be given away.

At the beginning of the week I got an invitation to speak somewhere. It was a generous offer to do something that is right up my alley. I was super-pumped to get the invite. Being the over-eager, impatient man that I am I wanted to cut out all the "let me think about it, pray about it, and talk it over with my wife" stuff and cut to the "yes" right on the spot.

But fortunately I've learned to restrain such impulses. And as I've talked it over with my wife, thought it over, and prayed about it, the Lord's brought this quote from George MacDonald up again and again:

"The will has been given to us that we....might have something to offer up to God."

Further reflection on this statement has found it to be most applicable to many areas of life. My mind has been given to me that I might have something to offer up to God. My imagination. My emotions.

Tease it out further: our relationships (spouse, kids, friends, parents, siblings) have been given to us that we might offer them back to the Lord. Our money. Our sex drives. Our homes. Our jobs. Our gifts and abilities and talents. Our challenges and adversities.

And my speaking invitation.

All of these things and more have been loaned out to me in order that I might give them back to God. It is much like the illustration C.S. Lewis (who, by the way, steals nearly everything from George MacDonald) gives in Mere Christianity:

When we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to his father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.

So I've been given an invitation that I am excited about in order that I might gladly give it back to my Father. And this doesn't make God any richer. It's just living into the reality of the situation.

I trust that the God who made me, loves me, and delights both in me and the people to whom I would speak has great gifts to give to me and to them. I am glad to entrust all of myself to the character of the good God who opens up opportunities for me in his timing for his purposes for my good and his glory.

All of this brings Him and me great joy.

And here, of course, is where our discontent comes in. When we cling to what we should give away, it rots. The "sell-by" date on all of God's gifts is basically immediate. The longer we imagine that something is ours to cling to as if it were an inalienable right, the more rancid it becomes.

Our gladness only comes in treating temporal and passing things as they deserve to be treated--that includes all that we typically refer to with the possessive pronoun "my" as in "my weekend" or "my life" or "my family" or "my career" or "my money."

And our gladness only comes as we treat things of infinite beauty and worth as they also deserve to be treated. To mistake the two and to join our lives with what is corruptible and destined to eventually die is to be joined to death, and so to die thousands of slow deaths ourselves on our way to each of our graves.

And conversely, as Lewis again says, if a person is united to God, what else can they do but live forever?

Fear of Chinchillas, Becoming Chinese in a Corn Field, & Propositioning In a Non-Sketchy Way

Proposition #1: most of the time most of us have no idea why we really behave that we do. Few of us are in touch with what genuinely drives or motivates our actions or activities, big or small.

Proposition #2: if/when we actually do this soul-searching work, most of us find that at the root of it all is fear. We're afraid of being rejected, disrespected, being overlooked, being insignificant, being disliked, and any number of other things, sometimes in dizzying combination.

Proposition #3: What comes across as pride or arrogance to those around us is just the opposite side of this same fear-driven coin. For example, we grasp for a promotion because at the root of it we're afraid that we're insignificant if we don't get it. That's fear, presenting itself as annoying arrogance. For some of you, fear drives you to withdraw, for others, it drives you to scrap and claw. But it's the same energy fueling the different responses.

Proposition #4: Fear is a basic survival instinct that serves us when being attacked by rabid chinchillas. But otherwise, it makes for a terrible life-guide. Most every decision that is run by fear bears only the fruit of fear: anxiety, worry, doubt, insecurity only increase in power the more we allow fear to run the show.

Proposition #5: The only way to live a life that is genuinely flourishing is to uproot fear from its place of power in our lives and deliberately replace it with something else.

Proposition #6: The Christian response to this problem is the love of God expressed to us in Christ. The apostle John writes that "perfect love casts out fear."

Proposition #7: This is much easier said than done. Living with a greater sense of the reality of the Perfect Love of God than the default operating system of fear in our souls is like learning a completely new culture while remaining in your original one. It would be like a white guy trying to become Chinese while living in an all-white corn farm community in Nebraska.

Proposition #8: This is why community and spiritual disciplines matter. These are the means of grace to teach us this new culture--this "kingdom of God" that Jesus invites us into. Without these things shaping and re-shaping us, we will default into a life poorly lived under the functional lordship of fear rather than the life well-lived under the gracious rule of Christ.

But this is getting way ahead of ourselves. First I'd suggest you see if proposition one and two fit. Then we can talk about the rest of it.

And as a public service, I'd suggest that you get your pet chinchillas their rabies shots.

Good News for All You Compliment-Haters, Too

So yesterday's post we talked to people-pleasers who sought out affirmation--there's something redeemable there, but the bad stuff has to die first and then it has to be re-directed towards its' intended target.

But fishing isn't the only way people relate to compliments. Some people avoid affirmation and compliments like my kids avoid bed-time. I think most people at this end of the spectrum would say that they attempt to brush off compliments because it feels awkward. They're just never quite sure what to do with them.

But I think that the reality is deeper. I think fundamentally people have a hard time accepting compliments because the compliments feel like lies.

Whatever the compliment, whatever the affirmation, the inner voice can find a dozen pieces of evidence to point to the contrary. The good things can't be true--look at all the ways that I've failed, all the insidious things inside of me or ways that I've completely screwed up.

We hate compliments because we hate ourselves. At the core of it, we can't imagine that there's anything genuinely worth celebrating or affirming. We're a mess. We know it. The person who speaks a kind word to us is either lying or just doesn't know us very well.

And here, the same Scripture from 1 Peter 1 speaks words of corrective freedom to you, oh affirmation-avoidant ones! Trials come so that your faith might be tested. What proves to be genuine "will result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

Here is the one, true celebration of you that cannot be brushed off. The faith that will be revealed will be pure, refined, and tested. And more importantly, the One who speaks words of celebration over you is neither a liar nor is He in the dark about "the real you." The one who knows you better than you know yourself will speak words of affirmation and celebration about who the real you always was, is, and ever shall be.

And so, at last, here is the word of affirmation that will not allow you to squirm, blow it off, or duck. It will settle deep in your soul--indeed, it will have a settling effect over the entirety of your soul. No more secret doubts or self-hatred. You can be at rest. This rejoicing over you will be the most true thing ever spoken about you. And it will be with you into eternity.

The failures and struggles of the night will be over. Dawn has broken. And we will laugh and sing and dance and celebrate one another and the goodness of Jesus for centuries and centuries together in the glad presence of our good and generous Father.

Given the Father's extravagant nature in rewarding even the most meager acts of faith with words of exquisite kindness and joy forever more, perhaps it would be a legitimate and holy spiritual discipline for those of you who hate compliments to learn how to accept them.

It'll be good practice for what's coming up ahead.

Good News for People-Pleasing Approval-Seekers

Hi, I'm Alex, and I'm a people-pleaser.

Hi, Alex!

One of the ways that my people-pleasing has worked out in the past is the need for regular approval and applause. If people are affirming me, I'm doing alright. If I'm not getting any love, I gotta' find a way to angle for some applause. I'm way healthier in this than I used to be, but those patterns still occasionally eek out of my soul.

Then I come to a passage like the one I hit the other day--it talks about the purpose of trials are to prove our faith to be genuine so that (get this) it might result in "praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed" (1 Peter 1:7).

So here's the bad news and the good news for applause-seekers like me. The bad news is that seeking applause is toxic. People-pleasing is death, and if we allow it to go un-checked, it will destroy us.

But there is a kernel of God-stuff in there: you were made to please Someone. There's a good Father who actually delights to be pleased with his children. Some of you have dads who were never pleased with you. Good news: God is not like that.

God delights to celebrate you. In the end your Father will take great joy in looking back over your life with you, looking intently for every smallest inkling of a step of faith and obedience that you ever took. And you and He will delight in it together. It will result in praise and glory and honor for you.

God cannot wait to delight in and over you; he does so already. When Christ is finally revealed he will do so once and for all. That’s good news for us people-pleasers who can become addicted to applause and approval—a call to repent from our addiction to people’s approval and look for and trust in the Father’s approval.

If only there was a 12-step program to help me to get there.

Paula Abdul, Amish Barn-Raising, and the Integration of Our Personality

The seven or so weeks after spring break in IV-staff-land is always deceptively busy. And this year I'm feeling it. I have been working late nights, weekends, and burning the proverbial candle at just about any end I could find. I'm feeling it. I'm tired.

And perhaps my readers are feeling it--I've felt really blog un-inspired the past several weeks.

When I get like this, odd things eek out. It's like exhaustion releases the stuff that's buried in my sub-conscious. Last week I caught myself singing the Paula Abdul classic, "Straight Up" which I of course knew every single word to, like every good teenager in the late-eighties/early-nineties.

And Paula Abdul is unfortunately preferable to some other things that have at points floated through my mind in my physically/emotionally/spiritually tired state over the past several weeks.

When I get a moment to step back and think, all this reminds me how much I am and will always be a mystery even to myself. There's just parts of me, things rolling around in my brain and heart and soul that I will never fully comprehend. And there's pieces of me that I just don't get.

We severely over-estimate our ability to understand ourselves. Only God truly knows us. The stuff that we're ashamed of. The stuff that seems to be in conflict within ourselves, our varying impulses and conflicting desires and the things that contribute to our dis-integrated-ness.

And the good news is that as we follow Jesus, he invites us onto a path of integration. He offers to take the gifts and desires and quirks and even the things that are destructive and work with those things to build a fully-alive human being.

"The Glory of God is man, fully alive" a guy named Irenaeus once said. God, like a gifted gardener, is glorified by the fruits of his labor--his people, as they become more and more alive in Christ.

The pieces of our personality are like scattered wooden beams. One of God's works over the course of our lives is to work with those pieces of our personality like a gigantic Amish barn raising. And at various points in our journey it might look awkward or off or like the pieces just can't possibly fit together. But God's at work, and we must be patient with his process.

To be a Christian, I once heard, is to give as much as we know of ourselves over to as much as we know of Christ. This is our part as God moves to make us whole. Some parts are un-usable and have to be burned up. Some parts need massive re-working, re-tooling. All the pieces of us need redemption.

To be sure, it's a process that will never be completed this side of our resurrection. But the good news is that God has tied himself to us, unbreakably and forever. And he will take all our various parts and bring them together for our good and his glory.

Even those Paula Abdul lyrics.

What To Do If You're in (Temporary) Funk-Land

So February has occasionally been a hard time of year for me. I feel restless, have a hard time sleeping sometimes, get lethargic, slip into a mild funk. Some years it's been really hard. Other years, it's been barely a blip. This year, it's somewhere in-between. It's seldom lasted longer than a couple weeks.

A couple of things that I try to do that might be helpful for others.

First, I try to be more disciplined about sleep, decent eating, popping extra vitamin C to keep sickness from adding further complication to an already off-kilter body and soul.

But of course the bigger issue (and this is way more pronounced who have ongoing battles with depression and/or other emotional issues) is what do I do with God in all of this? Where is he? How can I connect when I feel so sluggish and un-motivated?

For those of us with shorter-term challenges like this, I would suggest that there's an invitation to meet Christ in the midst of our brokenness that we should not miss.

I just don't have my "A-Game" right now. Yesterday I got in a really stupid argument with a student. I got irrationally angry at a person blocking the steps for people who were going down the stairs while I passed them going up the stairs. Dumb stuff.

This reminds me that grace and mercy are the most real things in the universe. When I can't perform at my best, I am reminded that regardless of my performance, feelings or competencies, God's grace and mercy are sufficient. My abilities and moods will ebb and flow, the grace of God is the thing that remains constant.

I am reminded that it's in my weakness that Christ is most glorified. I am a "cracked pot" so that God's grace and mercy might shine through those cracks in ways that are uniquely powerful. I need Jesus right now in a way that is more palpable, humbling, and holy than at other times of the year.

Of course I want to qualify all of this by saying that this is my situation and emphatically add that it's temporary. For those of you with longer-term battles, getting professional help and sometimes medications will be the most important step towards help.

And even others with short-term battles have them more severely than I do. Again, I'd encourage you to get help.

But for me, these couple weeks in February is a time when I am tempted to lose "True North" for a little while. And so it's a unique couple of weeks where I am reminded of my need for a savior who is much stronger and greater than I. And in that knowledge, there is grace.

Just don't let me see you blocking anyone's passage up or down those stairs,that just might send me over the edge...

Tiger, Madonna, Capri-Suns & The Disproportionate Impact of Pain

The other day I was talking with a good friend of mine who had just had a really cool "win" professionally. I was pumped for him. As we were talking, he commented that it seemed like the good things that happen in life don't have nearly the same degree of impact as the bad things.

He mentioned how celebs like Tiger or Madonna will sometimes talk about how they're never satisfied, there's always more they feel like they need to achieve to feel good about themselves.

"Some people say they don't get it," he said, "but I totally do. Something good happens and it feels good for about an hour, but then there's always the question--what's the next thing?"

This conversation has been ringing in my head for the past couple of days. Why is it that the bad seems to impact us disproportionately? And why is it that the good seems to pass so quickly?

So here are a couple of arm-chair musings, take them for what they're worth.

1. We were made to run on joy. So when the good happens, in some ways it's what "normal" should be, so the impact doesn't last.

So my car is made to run on gas. Occasionally I'll put 93 octane in there, but it's all just gas. Even the occasional 93 octane doesn't make that much difference for the long haul.

But say I took a bunch of my kids Capri-Suns, managed to figure out how to get those straws in there without poking the hole all the way through the back, and then filled the tank with Capri-Sun.

The damage done to the car running on Capri-Sun is vastly disproportionate to the good done to the car running on gas.

So it is with us. When good happens, it's what's we were made for. Worth celebrating, but really just how we were made to roll. When bad happens, it cogs the machine of our souls in a way that does disproportionate damage.

2. Given that we live in the Land of the Ruins, it is part of God's gift to us that nothing here ever satisfies for long. If it did, we would settle permanently for this life.

C.S. Lewis once famously wrote:

"...If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

It's good news for us in the end that life here doesn't satisfy. If it did, we would settle for making mud pies in the slums.

We are supposed to be somewhat dissatisfied with most everything here in the Land of the Ruins. It's designed to make us long for what we were made for.

Feel free to pass this along to Tiger, I think he might need to hear it.

True Validation and Freedom From Living an Apologetic Life

A couple of years ago I was asked to be a "spiritual consultant" in an ongoing way to a working group of about eight people. The only problem was, I wasn't invited by the people in the working group--I was invited by someone who was overseeing them.

I knew some of these people, didn't know most of them, and I wasn't sure they wanted any of my "help." I was nervous that I'd be perceived as a giant waste of their time. I was talking this over with a friend of mine the week of my first meeting with them.

"Well," he said, "if you go in feeling apologetic for your presence, you'll be completely useless to anyone and it will be a giant waste of everyone's time."

"But," he continued, "I think you've got something to offer them. And if you can go in not seeking validation from them, not apologizing for what you've been invited to go and do, then you could actually be a blessing to them.

"And what this means is that you've got to be able to stand validated by the Lord in front of these people, apart from their approval. Approval might not come from them. And it shouldn't have to. It would seem that God has invited you here. So don't apologize for that calling.

"Instead go in to serve them, regardless of what they're attitude is towards you-- because you genuinely care about God's work among these people and because you absolutely don't need anything from them. You have been validated already by God. What more do you need? You are now free to bless them apart from their opinion of you."

Of course, secular humanists would insist that we simply approve and validate ourselves. This is utter foolishness. From birth to grave, we are hard-wired to seek approval from something/someone outside ourselves. We were meant to find it in our Good Father. Instead, we seek approval and validation in one another, or in our resumes or GPA's or conquests or exploits or, or, or....

But the words of my friend re-centered me on the True Source of my ultimate validation. I am free to be who and where I am not because I'm so worth everyone's approval but because I have been approved already. And that, by the God of the universe.

And so, I am free. Free from living an apologetic life, always trying to prove my worth or validate my existence.

And that freedom is what gives me the strong center from which I can live a life like Jesus did: not to be served by others (including and especially by manipulating them for their approval in order to prop myself up) but to serve, bless, honor and love others---even to consider them before myself.

Super-You Must Die

The other day I was talking with a student who quoted a great passage out of Rob Bell's book, "Velvet Elvis."

In the book, Bell was talking about his early struggles as a pastor. One of them was that he felt the pressure to perform. He tried too hard to be super-pastor. "But super-pastor had to die."

Indeed, my friends. This is not just a problem for pastors. Many of us have super-us's in our imaginations. Those super-sized us's do not bless us. They are figments of our imaginations. They are "us" blown up exponentially beyond our ability to produce or perform.

Super-you must die. If she or he doesn't die, she or he will tyrannize you your whole life. And in the end, you're the one who dies. Cause of death? Suffocating under the ridiculous expectations of the super-sized you, a product of your own imagination.

Super-you must die. Otherwise, you play-act your way through life, trying to perform for that super-sized image, to live up to it. No genuine relating to anyone around you. No genuine relating to God.

Not a good way to spend your life.

Moving into Freedom From Guilt and Shame

All this is well and good. But how do we move beyond cognitively getting our minds around this (which for some of us is hard enough) but to actually inhabit this as reality, as the most true thing in the universe (which it is)?

A couple of thoughts:

1. The Spirit of God is not the Spirit of shame and guilt. God's Spirit is always the Spirit of faith, hope, and love who leads us into faith, hope, and love--even and especialy when disciplining us. This is foundational for how we relate to the voices in our heads.

2. The Spirit does bring conviction. Sometimes in our internal experience, it's hard to know if what we're feeling is genuine conviction or false shame and guilt.

If we've sinned, it is appropriate to feel guilt and shame--we are guilty and we have something to be ashamed of! The world in many ways would be a much worse place if no one ever experienced guilt or shame.

But the Spirit's goal in bringing conviction is always to lead us to repentance. The goal of the Spirit's "no" to us is to bring us to the "yes" of re-connection with God.

Therefore, if we have repented of our sin and the feelings of guilt or shame still linger, it's not the voice of the Lord we're hearing any longer. It may have been initially, but that work is done. We can confidently war against the guilt and shame at work in us after we've repented. Post-repentance, those voices (whether they were true convictionn initially or not) are not the servants of the Lord.

3. The process of forgiving ourselves (i.e. dealing with our guilt) is just that--a process. There have been times when I've been so angry with someone that I've needed God to help me to forgive them just 500 times that day. And by his grace, tomorrow it'll just be 450 times.

Similarly with us. Embracing forgiveness offered to us by the Father for ourselves might require that we fight for it, work for it, and remind ourselves 500 times today that we are forgiven. By God's grace, perhaps tomorrow it'll just be 450 times.

4. If guilt is focused on the past, shame is often focused on our present and future. Am I man or woman enough to deal with the present or future challenges? Do I have anything in me that is valuable or worthwhile?

The gospel says both "no" and "yes" to this question.

First, the no. In and of ourselves, we cannot do what is required of us, least of all what is required of us by God. Our flesh and our gifts and abilities, no matter how well-developed or disciplined or cultivated, cannot do the work required by God.

But yes, by God's grace, we can do the work that he has prepared in advance for us to do because it is not just us doing it. Paul is adamant throughout the NT that it is God's grace working through him, the Spirit working in him, God at work in him.

It is this fresh inhabiting, indwelling of God that empowers us, enables us to rise to the challenges of our lives. We live out of the new name he has given us, and in that, we are confident to move ahead.

5. We need community to speak all this back to us, because we will forget it.

If we have not spoken the gospel of grace, forgiveness, new name, the Spirit's work in us, to one another, we have failed to be the community and family of God that he has called us to be.

Super-Sized Me v. Easter: Shame Part 3

Enter Easter. What happens when super-sized me meets Jesus on the cross and the empty tomb?

First, and perhaps counter-intuitively, Easter confirms all our own worst fears about ourselves. Much of the anxiety we feel about ourselves is actually true. We are creatures that do not live as we were designed to live.

God is not interested in comforting sick people by trying to tell them that they are not sick. He is interested in healing sick people, which means that we have to get to the first step: admit the problem.

Easter is God dying a nasty execution-style death for you and for me. Easter rails against the soft-pitch humanism that is so rampant in our culture that would have us to only celebrate the potential of our humanity (which is true) while working overtime to ignore all that is disordered, broken and evil that is at work in us.

Easter declares that we are guilty. Easter does not excuse the brokenness and rebellion and selfishness and arrogance in us. Easter forgives it. There is a tremendous difference between excusing and forgiving.

Easter also confirms our desires for a new name. The super-sized self that we create is a feeble attempt at making ourselves live up to our potential. It fails, because simply imagining a super-sized self does not give us the power to live up to it.

Instead, the Scriptures say that God himself has come to give us our new names and also to re-wire us to actually be able to live into that new name: specifically a new heart and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Easter is God's buying back the right to name and re-name us and then gifting us the power to live into our true new name given to us in love by a good Father.

We long to be more than we actually are. Shame reminds us of that. Of course, some of our shame is false shame, just like there's false guilt. And false guilt and shame are made all the worse when they're put in the context of religion--Christianity worst of all.

Because the point of Christianity is that God meets us in the midst of that mixed bag of true and false shame and he replaces our super-sized self that would rule as a tyrant over us and instead gives us a true new name, a new identity to live into that doesn't kill us but instead affirms us to the core of who we truly are.

When we're living into that new name that God gives us in Christ rather than the self-invented super-sized self, shame is eliminated. Forgiveness and grace are the operating system instead of fear or anxiety or guilt. We don't owe anyone anything any more, all our debts are paid. Freedom and joy and life are ours.

The Purpose of Disappointment

A couple of weeks ago I posted about disappointment--how it seems to be necessary for maturing in our relationships with one another (I used my inability to build a real rocket ship for my son Davis as an example) and how it also seems necessary in terms of our relationship with God.

As I've been thinking about this over the past couple of weeks, it seems that a critical function that disappointment plays in our relationships both with people and with God is this: disappointment forces us to relate to the person or God as they really are.

This place on earth where this plays out with most relentless predictability is in marriage.

We come into marriage with an overly-glorified picture of who this person is. If you didn't have that, you wouldn't bother to get married to them in the first place. We always marry a person who is part real, part illusion. The percentage of "real" and "illusion" vary by personality and temperament.

Then the honeymoon is over. And the reason that's a cliche in our culture is for this very reason--you hit disappointment.

But the only way for their to be any real relating (and not a plastic, fake relating) is for the honeymoon to eventually be over. That's when the real intimacy begins. As long as you are attempting to be married to an illusion rather than a real person, true intimacy is impossible.

Unfortunately, at this stage there are paths other than intimacy that many people choose: going-through-the-motions or divorce. Many never make it to anything resembling real real relating, real intimacy. I'm just on the beginnings of the road myself.

It is easy for our picture of God to be either overly militant or (more likely in our time) overly drowsily grandfather-ish. We would like for God to pat us on the head and grant us what we'd like and not bother with us in too many other ways.

But to relate to God as a real Being, not as a product of our own illusions and wish-fulfillment, means that we must at some point bump up against something that is solidly "Other." God is not at our beck and call. He is Reality; so very real that we barely exist compared to him. And he cannot be used, manipulated, or controlled. He must be related to as a Person, not a vending machine in the sky.

Sometimes that Other-ness is hard to accept and costs us a great deal of pain and sadness. Often, just like in marriage, people take the two diminishing-returns paths: going-through-the-motions faith or divorce.

But to persevere through this pain of disappointment is the path to life, to real intimacy with God and with all that he has made for us to enjoy. The fires of disappointment burn us. But they also burn off much that needs to die if we are to make our way through to the High Country, to life in the Land of the Trinity.