Overcoming Disappoinment

Disappointment is the death of a hope or dream. Like all deaths, it's good to grieve. Some of you would rather skip that step. That's foolish. There's only so much sweeping things under the carpet you can do before it starts to smell real bad under there.

But for those of us who have no problem grieving disappointment, there's the equal and opposite temptation: to dwell in disappointment land forever.

Grief can be such a powerful and loaded-up emotion that it can demand all of us. And for a season we might need to pay that steep cost--especially if the disappointment is life-altering in some significant way.

But eventually you reach the point of diminishing returns. Your grief over your disappointment is no longer healthy or processing. It becomes wallowing and incestuous--an endless rehearsing of the events or the feelings.

There comes a point when you have to either decide to allow grief and disappointment to be your God or God to be your God. They aren't fundamentally mutually exclusive--certainly God leads us through grieving processes and, in fact, grieves with us. But there comes a point when he invites us to carry our grief with us into another season, towards a different destination.

And so we have a choice to make. Will we take up this cross and follow Jesus, or will we linger over the disappointment, nurse it, keep the anger and hurt fresh by recycling through the whole thing over and over again?

My father-in-law worked at Kent State University for several years, a campus famous for the shooting of students during a Vietnam Protest. He talked about how for some of the folks who were around back in those days, the clock stopped. They were so shocked that something like that could happen on their beloved campus and they just couldn't move past it.

Alas that some of our lives are stagnating by pooling at the place of disappointment well beyond the shelf life of healthy grieving.

There comes a time when you've got to move on. Some of us try to over-rush that process--those of you in this camp need to allow Jesus to tend to your wounds rather than rush on. But many of us are tempted to over-stay our welcome.

And for us, the point is that this life doesn't stop because of disappointment. There's good work prepared in advance for us to do by our Father. If we let disappointment hijack our lives, we pay the steep cost for the idol we have made in the image of our shattered hopes.

There comes a time to say good-bye to the disappointment and move on.

Crisis Options

It seems to me at some point in any crisis--be it small, medium, or catastrophic--the road forks and you've got three choices.

Either you will continue to obsess and fixate over things that you have zero control over. This is most common amongst us type-A and type-A wannabe's.

Or you will quit on the whole enterprise, attempt to avoid and escape through any number of numbing and escaping venues (alcohol, drugs, entertainment, etc.).

Or you recognize that there's things that you can control and things that you can't. And so you center-down. You realize that the things you can't control need to be let go into the hands of the Father. And the things that you can control are almost all internal or in very close proximity to yourself. And so you find peace and rest in the fact that you can only do what you can only do. And the rest has to be left up to God.

I think the Lord's been leading me through a series of things over the past five to six years to learn how to choose door number three. And it's hard to get there and walk through that door. But once I do, I'm finding a lot of life on the other side.

God's Testing and Falling into Beautiful Deaths

I don't like to think about the fact that God tests us.

I like to think about God's redemption, the ways that he brings life and peace and joy...all those things that I fight to believe and want to believe about God and his ways with me. But I don't like to think about God testing us and I don't think that I experience it very often.

But recently I think I've been in a testing season of my life. The stuff that I'm being tested over is mostly about the battle for my heart and for what I'll give my allegiance to. They're the kind of issues that make sense inside your head and with a few close friends but wouldn't seem all that important in a vacuum.

And while I don't like to think about it, it's clear throughout Scripture that testing comes from the Lord. This is what many of the New Testament writers attribute persecution to--testing that is proving whether or not their faith is genuine.

Compared to being thrown in jail or being burned recreationally to light parties (thank you, Nero), the type of testing I've been through seems almost trivial. But I think the goal is the same regardless of how the testing comes about: it's a refinement process.

Our heart gets so muddled and our affections so easily diluted. It's easy to get lost and for our love for God to turn lukewarm. And so he tests us.

One reason why I don't like to think about God testing me is that I don't like to think that God is up "in the sky" playing games with us. But he's not.

This testing is a real testing. And this refining is mission-critical to the development of our character and commitment. If there was some other way to deal with the idols in our hearts, he would do it. But sometimes there's not. And so he tests us.

Recently a friend of mine reminded me of something that I posted a couple of years ago--I wonder if fall is God's way of reminding us that some of the deaths that he invites us to die can be beautiful.

Testing is one of the ways he invites us to die beautiful deaths.

In the past week I've made small steps towards staring down some old demons. It's been exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time. And when this is all over, I'll be glad to take a rest.

But in the mean time I'm leaning into some promises from Scripture: on the other side of all the deaths God calls us to die (beautiful or not) is always, always, always more life.

My Plans Meet Eeye-Ore and the Christmas Carols

Periodically over the course of our lives, those of us who attempt to live out this following Jesus thing at all seriously bump up against the reality that God occasionally refuses to get on board with our reasonable plans.

We make what seem to us to be perfectly reasonable plans for relationships, career, what to do with our money, how to view sexuality and marriage and worship and raising our kids. And then we find either in the Scriptures or circumstantially that God says no to our plan.

And at this point many of us quit on God in order to do our own thing. Happens all the time. Some of you can identify the fork in the road where God said "no" to something you wanted and so you said "no" to God. Some of you are perhaps at that fork in the road right now.

Some of you said "no" to God's "no" several weeks, months or years ago and now you're on your way back to God. Your plan that sounded so very wise and reasonable back then doesn't look so wise and reasonable now.

As for me, I've certainly had times when I've chosen to say "no" to God's "no." But more often than not at this point in my life, I'm accepting it, but kind of passive-aggressively. I get angry. Then I pout and mope and get all Eeye-Ore-ish.

If it gets really bad, I start listening to Christmas carols. Don't ask me why, I'm not even sure why. It's just how I roll.

When we strip away the outer-wrappings of whatever it is we're wrestling with God about, the issue almost always comes down to this: who will you trust to decide your life and direct your future? Who am I, who are you, going to trust with the steps of our lives?

I've hit some Eeye-Ore patches over the past six months. I've dialed up a little Handel's Messiah a couple times this fall. I've been angry and wondered and pouted and struggled with God and with anyone who I can get to listen to me.

But I think on the other side of some of it, I'm coming out with roots pressed deeper into the love of God. I think that I'm weathering this storm still--not done yet--but it's starting to abate.

And I think I can already sense there's fruit from it. I think I'm more committed than I was a couple months ago to trusting God with my plans.

In a couple of weeks, I'll have the official green-light to start playing Christmas-type music without the prerequisite of being in a funk.

My prayer is that as I continue to press ahead towards the celebration of God coming to get us, I'll find myself not only glad to celebrate what he's done in the past, but more reckless than ever in trusting him with my future.

Why Seminary Students Stink and Moving Past Being the Guru

"Seminary students are horrible preachers," I once heard Tim Keller say.

"And the reason is that we all prepare sermons based on the questions in our heads that we bring to the text or the issue that we've been asked to preach on. And seminary students are spending all their time asking one another questions that nobody else cares about.

It usually takes them a couple years to de-tox from the questions they've been thinking about in seminary before they start asking the questions that the people in their congregations are actually wrestling with."

I thought about this quote from Keller last week when a staff that I'm supervising passed on a question from one of his students. This student had read an article either for a class or just randomly on the internet that was arguing that the Old Testament names for God shift dramatically after the Abram/Abraham story and therefore all the rest of the OT (and NT for that matter) was corrupt.

So the question this student had was, "are we actually worshiping God or something else when we read and respond to the God of the Bible?"

This is a classic college student question. The type of stuff that I love to talk about--and the type of question/issue that very few of you in cube world or chasing down kids has the time or interest to care about.

But the questions I'm wrestling with as an Area Director in my new position one-step removed from students are very different from this question of who Abraham's God was.

I spent all last week helping my staff wrestle with issues of funding and budget shortfalls. The economy is doing a number on most all of them--please support your local staff worker!

The questions here are much more subtle. And God is rarely articulated directly in relation to them. When we're talking about issues of fund raising and having to take time off campus to do it and whether or not take a raise that is needed, it stirs up all kinds of angst about policies and procedures and strategies for how to raise the funds required to make a live-able wage.

And I'm beginning to recognize that these types of issues, which are much more akin to the types of issues that many of you who aren't students face, require a different approach. Rather than being the guru on the hill who delights to field questions about the validity of God, I must be the one who asks the questions.

"How does God relate to this? Where is God at work here? What does it mean to trust him? What does it look like to do this work in faith, hope, and love instead of fear, guilt or anxiety? If the gospel matters, it must matter here--how might the gospel be applied to this situation?"

It takes a different type of energy and a different approach to be the one to interject the God-questions rather than to be the one who receives and processes the God questions.

This isn't completely foreign to me. Obviously with students there were lots of times when I had to ask them to consider an issue they were facing in light of the gospel.

But I'm learning how to work it out in a different context, with different types of issues, and with people who are beyond the 18-22 window. And that's been a good challenge that applies more directly to my own life stage and the life stage of my friends. Hopefully it will make me a better blogger!

But I must confess that I do miss the occasional, very random question about Hebrew names for God in the post-Abrahamic Scriptures.

Excel, Enron, and Competence (Zap or No Zap)

My job has historically been about people, not numbers. Last spring I was working with an Excel spreadsheet and in a moment of frustration I posted on my Facebook status a very revealing question: “Can anyone tell me how to add a column of numbers in Excel?”

I rightly received plenty of mockery, along with a few kind souls who condescended to tell me how to do the simplest Excel function on the planet.

Yesterday, as a part of my new job, I was working with about a dozen of my staff team’s budgets. All on Excel. And all of them were counting me to know what the heck I’m doing as we make decisions about relatively important things like their pay checks, how much more fund raising they need to do, and whether or not they’ll have to leave campus to do it.

And so, in keeping with my last post, I was anxious. I didn’t want to screw things up. The situation called for resources that I wasn’t sure that I had—in this case, a working knowledge of Excel and a basic understanding of how to adjust and work the numbers.

In one of those instances that illustrates how random and sometimes poor the chapter breaks in the Bible can be, I was reading in 2 Corinthians 3 as Paul picks back up on the question that he posed back in chapter 2 that we considered the other day: “Who is equal to such a task?”

And after a brief tangent to start chapter 3, he comes back to continue to answer his own question: “ Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent…”

God has made Paul competent. I think that this plays out practically in two ways.

First, is the method that we all wish God would do more often: God zaps competence into us. In the mystery of his goodness and the power of his Spirit, we sometimes receive a gift that we didn’t know that we had or an insight or understanding that is clearly not of us and obviously given to us from God.

But the second method is much more common and therefore much less celebrated: God leads us into situations and circumstances in order to teach us things. Our competence comes from God as he leads us into a life of learning from people, classes, mentors, friends, Scripture, prayer, and trial-and-error.

We experience the ups and downs of this and therefore we think competence that comes in this way is of ourselves. But a moments inspection of this proves it to be utterly false. How many circumstances over which you had absolutely no control contributed to the process? How many people, opportunities, and resources came your way that were beyond your ability to manipulate or make happen?

So yesterday, I was led into a step of God-competence in Excel. In a moment of mild panic, I called my old boss. She’s been doing this for over a decade. She’s walked me through a couple of simple processes that helped me to understand how to make changes in someone’s budget so we could run different scenarios. No Enron book-cooking here, I promise.

I much prefer to avoid situations where I am generally incompetent. And when I am forced into a situation where I’m clearly incompetent, I much prefer for God to zap me with competence.

But yesterday was a good example of walking in God’s plan to develop competence in me. It’s his doing. I’m his follower, his disciple. He’s teaching me all the things that I need to know—including who to turn to for help when help is needed.

I will probably never be exceptional at Excel. That doesn’t really bother me all that much. But I do want to learn to recognize and embrace how God is at work to shape me and grow me and teach me…whether that occur via a zapping or more conventional means.

How Round-Up at Panera De-Supersized Me

Two falls ago on campus, I came into the year with tons of high hopes. Our ministry had grown the previous year to record numbers, we had some strong people in place and a clear vision and some good culture-changes. We were ready (so I thought) to take off.

And then the school year actually happened. And for a number of reasons (including some that I do not fully understand) the start of the year was a train-wreck. What I thought was going to be a year of momentum and success and growth started out a disaster.

And I became a train-wreck. I couldn't sleep at night. I was anxious, angry, taciturn, grumpy, perpetually frustrated. My wise wife saw how I was sinking with each successive speed-bump and she called me out: I needed some perspective on all of this. I took a four month sabbatical.

Over the course of my sabbatical, I spent countless hours at Panera with my Bible, journal, and my Ipod shuffled through Handel's "Messiah" endlessly. And while I sat there at Panera with my Bible, journal, and Handel, the Lord began to ask me some significant questions.

Who's kingdom was this about, really? Was this Jesus' kingdom or Alex's? Who's name was I seeking to advance? Was it about His name or mine?

In my self-deception I had taken my own ego and this work (supposedly done in God's name, for God's name) and made it all about me. I claimed it was all about Jesus, Lord over the universe. Really it was all about me, becoming super-sized. I spent many hours spraying the Round-Up of repentance on the roots of my self-absorption and re-rooting myself in Jesus

And so yesterday's post about the importance of overcoming our self-deception rang in my heart this morning as I read Jesus' question at the end of John to the guards who are coming to arrest him and take him to his execution: "Who is it that you seek?"

Jesus knows who they seek. They seek him--to arrest him and to kill him. He has been praying about this, talking about it with his friends the disciples. The question isn't out of ignorance, it is to bring what is being done in darkness into the light.

And the question has the same impact as I considered it today: who is it that I seek? Do I truly seek the One who made me, died for me, rose for me? Or do I seek a Jesus made in my own image? Do I seek to be like God (the first temptation) or do I seek the one who is God who invites me to make my dwelling in him and allow him to dwell in me?

Is this whole God thing really just an extension of my own ego or is it the Holy Other who comes to meet me but who will only meet me on his terms. There is no negotiation between my ego and Jesus. I will love one and hate the other. One will win and one will lose in the battle for supremacy in my heart.

Who is it that I seek? Is it Jesus or is it me, supersized?

For today, at least as best as I can see and know and understand, I give myself to Jesus. And I recognize that sometimes the one that I call Jesus can sometimes be just a smokescreen for self-advancement. And so I can only give all that I know of myself--including my perpetual temptation to self-deceive--to all that I know of Jesus and ask him to sort it all out.

Good thing he's good at that sort of thing.

Why I Don't Trust Myself (And What I Do About It)

So there's a lot of talk in both religious circles and the pop-psycho-babble Oprah's book club circles about being true to oneself, about finding out who you are and living into that.

And clearly there's much to be said for this. In our cult of personality world where the Hylton sisters can be famous just for being famous, it can be tempting to build a life of appearances rather than anything of substance.

Even in religious circles, there's personalities that we can be tempted to emulate in self-defeating ways. In the galactically famous David v. Goliath story from the Old Testament, the voice-cracking, zit-popping pre-teen boy David tries on king Saul's armor first before discarding it in favor of his trusty slingshot and a couple of smooth stones. He was a shepherd, and he would take Goliath down as a shepherd.

But there's a problem with all this 'be true to who you are' talk. We don't have any earthly idea who we actually are.

This is in part because of a lack of information. But it continues well beyond our own pre-teen, voice-cracking, zit-popping years. And that leads us to the real problem: self-deception.

We tremendously under-estimate our own capacity to self-deceive about who we think we are and why we do what we do. Self-deception is the proverbial monkey wrench in the battle-cry of 'be true to you!' that rings out from Oprah to Dr. Phil to the messages of moralistic, therapeutic deism that so drive much of our religious landscape.

And so I am deeply skeptical of my own ability to find my way towards being faithful to me...or even of that being a laudable goal.

On thing that helps me are tools: I like stuff like Myers-Briggs personality tests and the Enneagram not because I'm self-absorbed (although that might be true) but because it helps me to see myself. The Spirit uses this stuff to help me see myself for who I truly am.

This is particularly crucial for a couple of groups of people: leaders and parents. If you don't know your un-healthy tendencies, you'll most likely pass those along to the people you're leading...a particularly unsettling thought when it comes to the little people.

Ultimately, we will always remain a mystery to ourselves. There will be parts of ourselves that will always make us sad or surprise us.

But there is One who knows us. To the one who made us, we are no mystery. We're fully known, even the deepest, darkest corners. That passing thought you're shocked by? No shock to God.

We were made to know God and to be known by God. And God is patient with us. There's stuff about God that we can't handle. And there's stuff about ourselves that we can't handle yet, either. He is good to show us himself and ourselves as we are ready to receive it. We can deceive ourselves nearly infinitely--no personality test can outsmart our self-deception. But we do not ever deceive God. That's good news.

And in the end, I do think that we are most fully human when we are doing what we were made to do. I think how we get there however is often less to do with digging into ourselves and more about looking for help outside of ourselves.

Further Reflections on Having Our House Broken Into

So there were two high-water-mark events of our Labor Day weekend. The first was that I got to preach on Sunday at Chapel Hill Bible Church and the second was that our house got broken into while we were away.

Given that the sermon was about "Overcoming Opposition" my wife only half-jokingly says that the latter event was clearly my fault.

And I say that given that the sermon topic was assigned to me out of Nehemiah 4 by one of our pastors, it's clearly Dave Ward's fault. Dave, you'll be getting a bill shortly.

But it has been striking how the fruit of my time in Nehemiah 4 is really applicable to what we've experienced with the break-in.

Quick summary: Nehemiah is a Jew in captivity working for the king as the cupbearer, Jerusalem is in shambles and conquered. Nehemiah gets permission from the king to go and re-build the wall of Jerusalem, he rallies the people to go to work.

Nehemiah 4, a couple of guys aren't excited about the Jews re-building their wall and they set themselves against Nehemiah and his efforts. Hence, "overcoming opposition."

Nehemiah does a number of things that are instructive...and that have shaped how I've thought about our little episode.

First, Nehemiah never talks to the guys who taunt and insult the builders. He only talks to God. Prayer puts a boundary around the power Nehemiah's opposition will have over him and his people's work.

God is always the third party, active, throughout Nehemiah. And part of the intensity of an oppositional situation is how much it locks us in emotionally. We're having conversations in our head. We're internally embroiled in a toxic environment. And so we cede power over our lives to our opposition.

But prayer diffuses this Cold-War retro experience. It puts a boundary around the power the situation will have over us and it puts victory squarely in God's court. Final victory is his, not ours.

This is the victory I celebrated in yesterday's post that the Lord has worked in my heart. Several months of prayer has really freed me to not freak out that some of our stuff got stolen. It's not mine, anyway. It's God's. I gave it to him just that morning. He can do whatever he wants to with it. He is Lord over me, my stuff, and the guys who took my stuff.

Secondly, Nehemiah not only prays but he posts a guard. Some of us will pray and not post a guard when facing opposition. Others of us will just post a guard and not pray. But biblical wisdom calls us to do both.

So we're considering an alarm system--even just something that made a ton of noise if someone broke in. I'd love a dog, personally, but given that a dog would have been either boarded or otherwise out of the house (since we were traveling) it's hard for this particular instance to build my case!

And in the final analysis, Nehemiah (and we) trusts in the Lord to do what only he can do. The guard is not Nehemiah's hope. God is. God is the one who works through guards to protect innocent people all the time.

Alarm or no alarm, our hope is not in an alarm. Our hope is in the God over our home and our lives and our kids who works through stuff like alarms to keep people safe.

And finally, I believe that we're allowed biblically to identify our opponents. Scripture does so all the time. But we do so in order that we might do as Jesus did: we love them. And this, my friends, is perhaps the greatest challenge of them all.

And it's why we need Jesus, who dwells in us and who has already done this perfectly, to do it through us.

Reflections on Having Our House Broken Into

So when the family and I got back from a weekend trip to see the grandparents (in between coming back to preach at Bible Church on Sunday) our house had been broken into. My wife's computer got taken, along with a handful of other electronics: DVD player, microwave, cd player, etc.

We were supposed to be headed straight out to a birthday celebration, so some great friends came and took our kids to the party (thanks, Kortus family!) while Kelly and I talked with the police and straightened things up.

It's sobering to get your house broken into--it makes you feel vulnerable. Our room was totally trashed--they went through drawers looking for jewelry or gold bars or loose diamonds or enriched uranium or something. I'm sure they were disappointed to find that my sock drawer contained only socks.

It's funny what they left: our old t.v. was too big and old and heavy to take. Ditto our printers. Some of what they took was in need of replacing anyway--our cd player wasn't working and the microwave was burning the popcorn.

As we straightened some things up and drove to pick up the kids, we prayed. My wife prayed really generous prayers: that the men who did it would know the love of their Father, that they'd repent, that they'd find good work to do, meaningful work to do.

I've felt really gracious towards them as well. Been praying for conviction for their hearts mostly so that they'd come to their senses and end up living a life worth living. And I'm grateful that they weren't malicious. They were looking for stuff to sell and money to take. They could have done much more damage to the house.

Our kids have been a little spooked, but they've been okay. And insurance has been only moderately difficult to deal with.

Over the summer I realized that I was somewhat worried about our stuff--mostly worried that something "big" could break (like a car or roof or plumbing or wiring) and worried that we didn't have the money to fix it.

And so I started praying for the stuff. Daily, I give back to the Lord our cars and our house and our roof and plumbing and electrical and tell him that I trust him with it.

And what I've found over the past 23-ish hours since coming home to a plundered house is that this has worked to root in a new perspective on my stuff. It's God's stuff, not mine. He can protect it. He can allow it to be taken away. Either way, we ask him to provide for us what we truly need.

As I work with insurance adjusters and electricians and window-repair people, I'm trying to honor them as God might. And even as I hit grumpy patches today, I'm praying that God would give me a trust in him--the one who's Lord over my family, my stuff, my insurance company...all of it.

And I'm praying that I might learn to release other things to him alongside our stuff. I'm praying that I might grow up into a man who is surprised to find himself free from the things that would otherwise take up way too much prime real estate in my heart and my soul.

That...and of course I'm praying for continued favor with the good folks at my insurance company. USAA, have I told you lately that I love you?

The Kirks Go Camping, My Smelly B.O, and True Spiritual Maturity

This past Friday night Kelly and I embarked on something we've been talking about doing for quite some time: our first ever family camp-out.

It was just Friday night. It was just thirty minutes away down at Jordan Lake. We figured if everyone was melting down at 2 a.m, we could come home and get a decent night's sleep.

It actually went spectacularly well. Our kids were satiated with hot dogs cooked over the open fire and s'mores for dessert. We all (eventually) slept and we had a great time wading into the lake and playing in the woods. Score one for getting back to nature for the Kirk family, hopefully we'll be able to do something a little more ambitious next time.

Of course, being a guy, the fire makes the camp out for me. It was a small-ish one, but hey, open fire is open fire.

While I was there, I was surprised at how not-smelly I was. I generally associate camping with serious body odor, soot and ashes and everything smelling like smoke. I assumed that this was not the case on this particular trip because we weren't there that long and that we kept the camp fire intentionally small.

And then I got home. And once I was away from the great outdoors and the constantly smoldering fire, I realized that my previous evaluation of my odor was way off. I stank. Everything we brought with us stank. Smoke-smell permeated all our stuff. But it wasn't until I was out of it that I could recognize it.

And this is how it is with our spiritual and moral condition. Scripture describes coming to Christ as coming out of the darkness and into the light. As we do so, we begin to see ourselves as we truly were. The darkness had hitherto covered up many things. Now those things are exposed.

Often in Christian circles we talk about spiritual transformation as if it were an ever-increasing experience of personal improvement.

But Calvin and other Reformers talked about the Christian life not (primarily) as increasing personal improvement but as perpetual repentance. Spiritual maturity, they argued, was about repenting from our ever-at-work sin as soon as it was revealed to us. Cutting down the lag time between seeing our sin and repenting of it was the goal.

There are few places in our lives where we are more self-deceived than in our estimation of our own moral goodness. We will almost always think of ourselves way too highly or way too lowly.

This is why we need the light of Christ. If we're constantly judging by our own internal lights, we'll mis-diagnose the reality of the situation and therefore mis-prescribe what is necessary for healing.

All I needed on Saturday was a good hot shower and to either wash or burn my clothes (Kelly voted for the former). In my spiritual journey, the work is even simpler but more demanding: repentance (literally: "to change your mind" or "turn around") works a cleansing that's much more thorough.

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?

Sources of Misery Part 1: The Greener Grass in the Rear-View Mirror

It seems to me that one of the chief causes of misery for many people is the condemning of the present by comparing it to an overly-romanticized remembrance of the past.

For some people, the grass is always greener in the rear-view mirror. They complain mightily about how things were at their old job, church, neighborhood, or simply at an earlier season in life.

But in Christ, the past is not ours. Not ours to overly-glorify. Not ours to regret. Not ours to cling to. In Christ, the past is His. His to redeem and make to serve our good.

The present is the only place where we can fully experience and know God's work. Being awake to the wide-awake real, the real presence of Christ in real-time, exactly where we are--that is the invitation of God to his children.

This is true even and especially when the present takes us away from a place or a time that we have loved. To hold a glorious season of the past loosely unto releasing is almost as hard for some of us as letting go of past mistakes. But both are ours only for the giving over to God, not ours for the hoarding.

In the end all of our story must be handed over Jesus. And in the end, this present moment is the sphere and realm of the work of the Holy Spirit. We can either receive that gift or reject it because it does not live up to the measure of what we had experienced in the past.

But to reject this day and all that it has to offer us is finally to reject the work of God in real-time. To reject this day's work, people, challenges, chores, and recreation is to miss the myriad opportunities to explore the un-discovered continents of God's grace and love that are available to us each day.

Time to stop looking in the rear view mirror. The grass probably wasn't as green as you remember it anyway.

Pony Rider over Soccer Player & The Importance of Leaving the Party for Zoe

Before I had kids one of the things that I saw in my friends who did that caused me the greatest angst was having to leave a gathering of some sort because your kid was a mess.

I'm such a crazy extrovert, I mostly just want to be where the most number of people are in any given social event. I couldn't imagine having to give up the crowds in order to take care of a kid.

But over the weekend, there we were: me, Kelly and the kids at a fine and very rare gathering of most of the IV staff in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. The people were all inside. But one of my kids, the most introverted of the five of us, at least at this point, needed a break. She asked if we could go outside to the swing set.

I took a deep breath and then gladly took her hand and we went out back. I pushed her on the swing and we chatted about what she wanted to be when she grew up (currently it's a pony rider over a soccer player, but not by much).

We stayed out there for a while and then it was pretty clear that all our kids were needing to get on the road. We gathered them up and headed for the door--the first ones to leave, a station in life that pre-kids was utterly foreign to me.

Before I had kids I couldn't conceive of meeting their needs over the call of the crowd. But now that I have real kids, not a hypothetical situation, that decision isn't quite as tough. My love for them compels me to take care of them, to prioritize them over the siren call of my flesh to always have to be in the midst of the action.

And all of this matters in any number of ways. But the most important reason is the deepest needs of their soul.

I won't always prioritize my preferences or comfort for my kids. But there was one who did. There's one who left the easiest place, the place of honor, comfort, power. There's one who left the party in order to come and get us--one who gave up all sorts of "rights" in order to come get you, get me, get each one of my kids.

He didn't just leave the loftiest place of comfort, he came to the lowest point of injustice and affliction. In order to secure our place at the party, he left it. He was born in an animal feeding trough. He lived in the muck and mud and mire of peasant-class Middle Eastern society. He died a brutal and shocking death. And he came back to life and re-ascended to the party in order to prepare a place for us there.

I need to be able to leave the party, as imperfectly as I am at it, in order to point my kids to the one who did, in order that they might not ever have to. And I'm getting better at it, by God's grace.

But I'm thankful that there's one who did it perfectly--that's my hope, both for me and for my kids.

Madonna, Beastie Boys, Jamz, and Avoiding Becoming a Corporate Suck-Up at Corporate

So through some fluke of history, InterVarsity has its' headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. Crusade has Orlando, Navigators has Colorado Springs, we've got Madison. Good thing I didn't choose my employer based on whether or not you could get a direct flight.

So anyway, I was in Madison last week for my Area Director training. I actually love Madison. It's a cool town and I've gone there just about every summer for the past fourteen years for some sort of training.

But given that it's InterVarsity mecca, there's lots of InterVarsity big-wigs around. And given that there's lots of big-wigs around, I found myself hoping to be noticed by those aforementioned big-wigs.

What happens at these training weeks for me is that I insidiously begin to rank my importance based on how pursued I am and who pursues me. After all, the Important People have meetings. And not just meetings but meetings with other Important People.

In my little ledger, you're even more Important if some other Important Person instigated one of those meetings. I found myself delighted by one or two meetings, disappointed to not be noticed by others.

Why do I get around a large group of colleagues and suddenly revert to junior high social dynamics? Why not go all the way and break out some old Jamz and play Beastie Boys on my cd-player boom box? I had terrible hair, braces and glasses in junior high--why does any part of me feel the need to re-live any part of that experience?

And so I found myself confessing and repenting throughout the course of the week of my multi-faceted idol that basically boils down to being addicted to the approval of others and finding my worth and identity in the people I know and the people who know me.

If I do not doggedly repent of this foolishness, I could very well waste the rest of my days chasing after all sorts of approvals and losing my soul in the process.

I hope that some day I can go to a national IV gathering of some sort and be deeply centered in Christ, be blissfully free of the need to be noticed by anyone.

Until then, I'll just be glad for any spiritual discipline that keeps me from reaching for old Madonna cd's.

Marriage, Money, and Making Real Change

So the top two things that most couples fight about are sex and money. I'm not sure if it's in that order (perhaps it depends on the couple) but for today's purposes, let's talk about money.

Typically in a marriage you've got one person who's the "spender" and one person who's the "saver." Let's say that a couple that's been struggling with money issues comes to seek your wisdom: the spender has over-spent a couple times the past couple of months, feels terrible about it, and the saver is frustrated and angry.

Depending on your "bent" you're most likely to counsel in one of two ways.

The first way you might counsel would be the pragmatic, systems-analyst approach. What's your budget? Is it clear who's paying which bills? Does the spender have clear guidelines as to what they're allowed to spend each month? How is that tracked? Is there enough money ear-marked each month to be saved for the saver to feel good about the progress?

This approach has tons going for it. It's about creating a clear "path" towards financial goals and wisdom.

An alternate way you might approach this (particularly if you're steeped in a gospel-centered approach to addressing issues in people's lives) is asking questions of the heart. This, after all, is where Jesus said the actions of our lives spring from.

What's the real issue for the spender? Are they seeking comfort in having more and more things as a way to prop themselves up? Are there issues here of control or power that are being expressed in un-healthy ways through the spending habits of the spender?

What's the real issue wrapped up in the saver's frustration? Are they really about saving in order to serve the marriage and the person they're married to or are they actually just seeking comfort, security, or identity in digits associated with their bank account?

This approach has lots going for it as well. There's opportunities for genuine repentance and deeper change. It's an opportunity to see our need for Christ, the cross, and power outside of ourselves to bring genuine, core change and freedom to our lives.

Both of these solutions have good things going for them but in my not-so-humble opinion, both are severely lacking without the other. Genuine change is about working both "the heart" and "the path."

Heart change without practical helps is not going to benefit the bottom line. Sometimes us more "spiritual" people believe the panacea myth that if we simply lead people to heart transformation behavior will follow. This is a myth. Heart transformation is crucial, but people need specific behavioral helps as well. This is why Romans does not end after chapter 8. It's not just "here's the gospel." But: "here's the gospel and these are the practical outworkings of what that means for our lives." We need both.

Bottom line change without the heart change means that sin patterns left un-dealt with are simply going to rear their ugly heads in some other place. Perhaps the money issue is solved, but the marriage might be headed for even worse times ahead because issues of fear, insecurity, trust, and mutual submission have not been dealt with.

I think what I've seen in my different contexts is that most people lean overly-much one direction or the other, thinking that they've cornered the "real solution" to the problem. Neither one of these is the "real solution." They're both necessary.

Of course, I'm sure none of you have any marital (or personal) problems at all that need this kind of change. This is for the next time one of your super-needy friends comes to you asking for you sage advice. If at all possible, look to both the heart issues and the practical ways that you can make a path towards new habits and health.

Your friends will thank you later.

The VCU Nose-Dive and Learning to Live in Fear

So if you would have asked me in college if 'fear' was a primary motivator in my life, I would have said heck, no.

And then I graduated and got my first ministry assignment with InterVarsity--staffing a healthy chapter of about 50 students at Virginia Commonwealth University. And then that healthy chapter of 50 was down to 15 by the end of my second year.

Suddenly, I began to recognize fears of all shapes and sizes drove much of what I did--both in the good times and the bad times.

Fear of failure. Fear of what others thought. Fear of disappointing others. Fear that I wasn't as smart or gifted or capable as I thought I was. Fear that what was happening in the chapter was a reflection of who I was, or wasn't...or that God had brought me here only to abandon me.

Fear, fear, and more fear. Over the years, the Lord has been good to show me how deeply woven into my psyche that fear is. Fear, it seems, is my constant companion. It drives me in much of what I do and it subtly tarnishes even my best and holiest moments.

These past several days the Lord has been good to have me in Psalms. Two things have stuck out as I've camped out in Psalm 32-34 these past several days.

The first is that the "steadfast love of the Lord" is the primary Noun in the world of the Psalmist. Good times or bad, the steadfast, never changing, always, permanent, faithful love of God is dominates the landscape.

The second thing that stands out is that the primary response of the Psalmist is fear. The fear of the Lord is the note sounded again and again and again in response to the characteristic steadfast love of God.

Of course fear in this context means a very different thing than the fears that are my perpetual motivation. Fear for the Psalmist means reverence, worship, awe, wonder. A deep sense that God is other, perfect, good, holy and steadfast in his love towards us catapults the Psalmist into a good, healthy, mouth-shutting, awe-inspiring fear.

So I've been praying about fear over these past couple of days. What would it look like if all my lower-case fears that gnawed away at my soul and robbed me of my joy were swallowed up in this one, final, good, holy Fear that is the only sane response to the steadfast love of the Lord?

What if fears about deadlines and performance and the past and the future were all subsumed in, consumed by, overshadowed by, re-oriented around this one necessary Fear? What if the primary Noun in my life was "The Steadfast Love of the Lord?" What if all was worship instead of worry and glad trust instead of anxious striving?

What if I was made to fear? What if my core problem is not that I fear too much it's that I fear too easily? What if there's only one escape from a life riddled with fears and that's to grow up into a much greater Fear that frees us to live in keeping with the most true thing in all the universe?

Incredulous Over Cinnamon Crunch Bagels and Learning Transitions

"I can't believe you're still doing this."

It was April, three years ago, a chance meeting at Panera as I munched on a Cinnamon Crunch bagel and worked on end of the year campus stuff. He was a former co-worker who started working with InterVarsity the same year I did, and he was incredulous that I was still on campus.

To be honest, I was a bit surprised, too.

But after fourteen years on campus I'm about to transition to a different job. Same organization, but a very different kind of work. Some might say that it's about time!

What transition does for me (and I'm guessing some of you) is generate eager anticipation mixed with anxious fearfulness about the future. Depending on your genetic make-up and your past experiences, you might be a bit more on the eager side or a bit more on the fearful side.

These past several days (as I've re-gathered myself post working 14 straight 16 hour days at Rockbridge) have been good as I've been engaging more concretely with the Lord about my own transition.

I want to share some of what's been helpful for me as I've engaged with the Lord, particularly in prayer. Not because I've got it all figured out, but because it's what I'm learning about in real-time. And that's what I like to blog about!

1. To quiet my anxious side, I lean into God's past grace. I pray specific prayers of remembering how God has been faithful to me in the past. The same God who was good to bring me thus far will be good to go with me into the next step of my life.

This re-frames some of the issues that cause anxiety. Was I ready for all that these past five years have thrown at me when I came to UNC? No. But it wasn't about me. It was about the Lord. He gave me grace for each day as needed.

He is enough, I'm not. My hope isn't in my own competence but in the Lord's perfectly timed grace for each day. And so I pray that back to the Lord. And I ask for help to remember that core, fundamental truth when I get fearful about the future.

2. To center my ambitious and perhaps over-eager side, I re-frame all that I typically call "mine" in light of the reality that all things are his.

These are not "my days," they are his. I do not create any of them, they come unbidden to me. And I am only truly free when I am doing as he would command me to do at any given moment.

And so I deliberately pray over my calendar, offering him all the days that are left in my life, to do whatever he would want, whenever he would want. He is the Master. I am his servant. He calls me friend, and so I am, but I am a servant still. And so I do or don't do whatever he would or wouldn't have me to do in the days that He gives me. That's my job.

Any dreams that I might have about what the future holds must be submitted to his will for my life at every stage of my life. Either I do that or I cut myself off from life. Those are my options.

Further, these are not "my gifts" or abilities. They are God's. He has given them to me that I might have something to offer back to him, to be used in his service. They are instruments of blessing insofar as they are submitted to the Lord and his Spirit.

When I attempt to control or manipulate His gifts for my own ends, the consequences are devastating and destructive for me and for all those around me.

And so I pray prayers of submission over the gifts he's given me and I offer them back to the Lord. And so I center the side of me that is excited about new opportunities to lead and to serve. Some of that is rooted in the Lord, some of that is rooted in my own selfish flesh.

But again, it's not about me. It's about him. And so I give him back what he's given me, saying yes to him before he even asks me to do anything with what he's given to me, so that I might know life and find joy in the work ahead.

My incredulous former co-worker is now working commercial real-estate in Charlotte. I'm still hanging around InterVarsity-land, working mostly with campus staff and some with students. Maybe it doesn't sound all that different to you. It feels pretty significant to me.

But regardless, I'm hoping that I might be nearer to Jesus at the end of this transition...and I'm hoping that maybe the new gig means that I get more opportunities to munch those Cinnamon Crunch bagels at Panera.

Pilgrims, Seinfeld & the Office, and Reflecting on my Last Large Group

Tonight, for the last time, I'll join a couple hundred college students for InterVarsity's weekly large group.

I've been going to large groups on Thursday nights for the past 18 years--four as a student, fourteen as a campus staff. In the process I missed out on Seinfeld, Friends, The Office and much else that has defined Thursday evenings for most other 36 year olds that I know--I think I've caught about two episodes each.

But in lieu of sharing tv experiences with America, I have been a part of God-moments. Certainly not every week. But plenty more than I can count. And tonight's my last chance to do that with a group of students that I can in some sense call "mine."

This morning as I felt the weight of tonight's last large group, God was good to have me in 1 Peter 1. In his opening, Peter refers to the churches he's writing as "strangers in the world." What he means is pilgrims, aliens, people who are in a sense disconnected from their exact context.

There's a call for people who follow Jesus to fiercely love this world while at the same time recognizing transience--our own and the transience of the way the world is currently. This world is not our home--at least, not yet. One day it will be.

But we are not to become overly-attached to the Land of the Ruins. We are pilgrims--moving, looking, waiting, longing for something more.

Tonight's large group reminds me that part of my work in following Christ is to love recklessly but not fix myself anywhere that is not home. Home is coming. In the mean time, I am to serve and love and work and play and rest and laugh. But I must keep moving towards home.

Some day, there will be no more good-byes. Some day, we will be in a permanent place. A place we can honestly and finally call home. I think that the military-kid in me longs for that with a particular ache.

In the mean time, we must live here as pilgrims. And we look ahead to the day when He makes all things new. Come, Lord Jesus.

After tonight I'll have my Thursday nights back. Maybe I'll join the world of Thursday night t.v. Maybe I'll just read a book.

All I know is that I wouldn't trade-out my last fourteen years of Thursday nights with students for anything else...and that as a pilgrim following Jesus, he has called me to leave what those Thursday nights have represented (campus and student work) for a new work that will have different costs, different blessings.

And my work, at the bottom of all of it, is to trust him.