Climbing Higher (Friday Devotional)

“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

- Colossians 3:1-3

In a corner by the bleachers of my middle school’s gym, there was a thick, heavy rope hanging from the rafters, its end dangling inches above the floor. You couldn’t miss it when you walked in the gym, so when my classmates and I got to gym class on the first day of school, it didn’t take long for someone to ask the coach about it. Smiling, he explained that we would be having a contest at the end of the year—anyone who could climb all the way up that rope would win a special prize.

We got used to seeing the rope as the year went on, and it just sort of blended into the background, no more notable than the paint on the walls. Until, that is, the week before final exams, when the floor around it was suddenly covered with soft mats stacked three feet high. The time had come, we realized—the contest was about to begin.

Some kids, the ones going out for football in the fall, pulled themselves to the top with relative ease, sliding down and high fiving their buddies when their feet hit the ground. Others barely even attempted to get off the floor, resigned to the knowledge that they were not up to this kind of physical challenge. I was somewhere in between—a good climber but not very strong. I didn’t know what to expect as I made my way up the rope.

What surprised me as I ascended halfway up the rope was not how quickly it wore me out—I knew going in that it was going to be a challenge—but how mentally taxing it was. When I looked down, I could see my whole class, from my best friends to kids I barely knew, all looking up and cheering me on. Everyone was watching; everyone had a guess as to whether I’d make it to the top. I knew there were only two starkly different ways this story could end—with total joy or total disappointment. With my muscles aching and the pressure on, all that remained was deciding whether the reward was worth the struggle.

For Christians living in a fallen world, every day is like climbing that rope. Believers are called to the difficult work of living like Christ, of seeking the things above instead of the things of this earth. Some days, armed with the power of the Holy Spirit, you feel up to the challenge and you climb heavenward knowing you have been raised with Christ.

But other days you look down at a world mired in cynicism, suspicion, division, and selfishness, and you want to just slide down where everybody else is. Confronted with unhealthy conflict, it’s easier to join the fray than to seek peace. Provoked to anger, it’s easier to lash out than to forgive. Told you have to choose the lesser of two evils, it’s easier to resignedly comply than to courageously seek something good.

Sinking to the world’s level is easier than rising with Christ, and it places you in a far bigger crowd, but the only reward it offers is disappointment. It is only by continuing to climb heavenward, only by seeking the kingdom of God instead of the kingdom of this world, that you will find joy. So may you seek Christ even when it is difficult, even when it is counterintuitive, and even when it places you outside the world’s norms. The reward is worth the struggle.

Think Bigger (Friday Devotional)

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

- Luke 11:9-13

When making vacation plans, Lindsey and I have a running joke that I find hilarious and she finds…less hilarious. She’ll excitedly start talking about different places she’d like to visit across the United States, already envisioning a dozen exciting destinations we could see. After a few minutes, she’ll turn to me and ask where I might want to go, and my answer is always the same: “We could go to El Paso!” For all its charms, a Texas border town is not exactly the input she’s looking for. The joke is always good for an eye roll that sends a clear message: I’m thinking way too small.

Similarly, Christians have a tendency to think too small when it comes to the gifts God offers us. Our selfish, sinful natures get excited by promises like those Jesus makes in Luke 11:9: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” We hear those words and start making a wish list of things that we assume are now suddenly within reach through the power of prayer—a bigger house, a better job, maybe a new car. If I just pray long enough and hard enough, the thought goes, God will reward my faith with my heart’s desire!

But not only does personal experience doom that interpretation—I still haven’t received the Lego set I prayed for on Christmas Eve of 1996—so does the passage from which that promise verse is derived. Jesus, after establishing the generous nature of the Father, makes it clear what gift it is that God gives so willingly—not material possessions, but the Holy Spirit. When you claim the promise of God’s generosity for your own gain and wind up disappointed, the issue is not God’s faithfulness, it’s that you’re not thinking too small.

We have a bad habit of reading Scripture, especially God’s promises, through selfish lenses, ultimately determining that God’s desire and purpose is to make us happy. However, the truth that is found in every one of these assurances, whether in Luke 11 or the Psalms or the words of the prophets, is that God does not seek to make us rich, but righteous. Even when we mistakenly start to believe our purpose on earth is to accumulate happiness, God’s purpose for us never changes, and that purpose is that we would find our joy in Him.

When you go to God seeking His good gifts, ask yourself what it is you really want—to bring glory to the kingdom of God or a boost to your own ambitions? God is incredibly generous when your eyes are fixed on Christ, and you will be amazed by the ways the Holy Spirit will empower you to carry out God’s mission. So if you find yourself frustrated by what feels like stinginess on God’s part, reexamine who you are wanting to benefit from your prayer—chances are, you’re thinking too small.

Accept No Substitutes (Friday Devotional)

“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.”

- Colossians 2:8-10

I have wracked my memory for details of the first time I saw it. I have looked everywhere I can imagine, but it somehow still evades me. It is my white whale, so elusive that I sometimes question whether it’s even real. My quest for it seems endless, the search a Sisyphean task. What is this Holy Grail I seek? A garlic parmesan chicken wing recipe.

I should explain. While I have virtually no cooking talent, I do have one specialty in the kitchen that I occasionally use to wow friends and family, and that’s homemade buffalo wings. I’ve been making them since high school and, at the risk of bragging, the reviews have been universally positive. The one complaint from my family early on was that there wasn’t enough variety—my dad and I would only make two kinds of wings, buffalo and teriyaki. So one night, aiming to please, I got online and found a random garlic parmesan wing recipe that looked good and we added those to the mix.

If Wing Stop’s CEO had come to our house that night, he might have written his resignation letter on the spot; the wings were that good. The new flavor was a hit, and I was commanded by the rest of the family to make it a staple from then on. Proud of nailing it on the first try, I promised to save the recipe.

But I didn’t keep my promise. The next time I made wings, I went online looking for that recipe, but nothing Google turned up looked quite right. I could picture what the webpage’s layout looked like, could remember certain ingredients it called for, but for the life of me I couldn’t find the recipe. After over an hour searching in vain, I finally settled for another recipe that looked similar. The results were…fine. But to this day, every time I make wings I start the cooking process on Google, hoping that maybe this time I’ll find that magical recipe.

Sometimes alternatives just don’t measure up to the real thing. In our world, you don’t have to look far for an alternative to the life that Christ offers—you can seek fulfillment through your career, peace through financial security, and truth through self-help, to name a few. There are a host of different avenues that promise to make you happier than you’ve ever been, healthier than you’ve ever been, even more ‘spiritual’ than you’ve ever been.

But ultimately, these alternatives reveal themselves to be what Colossians 2:8 calls “empty deceit.” They may satisfy in the moment, but they do not measure up to the fullness that comes only through Christ, because eventually they reveal themselves to be little more than cheap substitutes. Only Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; only he can offer the life God intends and the salvation God promises.

It is easy to become deceived and led astray by this world’s many alternatives to Christ. In the face of these distractions, may you devote yourself to the one in whom the fullness of God dwells, seeking to come to fullness in him—because there are sometimes when you can accept no substitutes.

Shared Sadness, Shared Grace

In a metal pail in my parents’ garage, there is an unusual assortment of baseballs. Some of them came home with us from Little League practice fields, some from spring training games in Arizona, a few just sort of turned up mysteriously like spare change in your sock drawer. Truth be told, I don’t know that we ever actually bought a baseball my entire time growing up.

There was one ball in particular that sat at the bottom of the pail, one we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw in the garbage but that never got played with. It had been a favorite of ours for a while, right at the top of the pile, until the ill-fated day we’d left it lying in the grass after a game. With us inside, none the wiser, the family dog got a hold of it, and by the time we found the ball a few days later, the damage was done.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the inside of a baseball before, but now I have, because half the cover of that ball was torn off. Beneath was a layer of tightly wound wool yarn, and beneath that the cork core. Everything inside I’d never seen, never wondered about, never particularly wanted to see was suddenly exposed. On the sides where the cover remained stubbornly on, you could see where the red cross-stitching was unraveling, could pull on the end of that red string and watch the cover peel off the rest of the ball. It was literally coming apart at the seams.

After this week, I know how it feels.

On Tuesday, I was sitting at the local Firestone waiting on an oil change and a new tire, and as I waited, I watched the mother of Alton Sterling’s son Cameron speak to reporters about Mr. Sterling’s death at the hands of a Baton Rouge policeman. I watched as Cameron, 15 years old, already taller than his mother, broke down sobbing, collapsing into the arms of a family member and crying out repeatedly, “I want my daddy.” That was Tuesday.

Wednesday morning I was home, looking over my notes for that night’s Bible study, when I saw the news on Twitter about Philando Castile’s shooting at the hands of a Falcon Heights policeman. In horror, I watched the video his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, had livestreamed on Facebook as the love of her life lay dying next to her. As I watched, I wondered what this second shooting of a black man at the hands of white officers would mean for race relations and our public discourse. That was Wednesday.

I spent most of Thursday in the Labor and Delivery waiting room at Baylor Scott and White with Ty and Hannah’s family waiting for baby Ellesyn to be born. With little to do in the 10 hours I was there, I was on my phone a lot, and so I spent quite a bit of time reading about those two shootings. I learned the details, I read the op-eds and thinkpieces, and I saw on social media the grief and the outrage and the fear from my friends, especially my black friends—that after Michael Brown, after Tamir Rice, after Walter Scott, after Eric Garner, after Freddie Gray, after so many other black men’s names and faces you and I don’t know, that there were now two more, and with them a resigned understanding that there would be even more soon enough.

And then, only about 30 minutes before I met the precious new addition to our Shiloh family, the news started pouring in about Dallas. A lone sniper, we learned, had gone to an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest hoping to kill cops, particularly white cops, and he had the plan, the training, the gun, and the ammunition to do just that. By the time I crawled into bed at midnight, we knew there were at least 3 police officers dead, a number that would eventually rise to 5, with 7 other officers and 2 civilians also shot. That was Thursday.

So in the wake of all of that, I spent most of Friday trying to figure out what to say to y’all this morning. I knew I needed to say something, that I couldn’t just pretend this week was any other week. I started and restarted this sermon about twenty times, and nothing sounded quite right. Sometimes even the preacher doesn’t have words.

On Friday I didn’t have the composure of Diamond Reynolds, or the resolve of Dallas Police Chief David Brown. I felt a lot more like 15-year old Cameron Sterling, weeping before the eyes of the nation. I felt that way because lately, our nation feels like it’s all coming apart at the seams.

I’m tired of people getting shot, whether in elementary schools or gay nightclubs or in front of gas stations or on the streets of downtown Dallas. I’m tired of having to parse whether Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter or All Lives Matter. I’m tired of watching national tragedies become political arguments while the bodies are still warm. I’m tired of seeing the flag fly half-mast. I’m just…tired. Tired and heartbroken.

So in my grief and my exhaustion, I turn to the God who gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. I remember that the tomb is empty, that the sting of death is a precursor to the victory of resurrection. I look with hope to the day when He will wipe away every tear, when death will be no more, when mourning and crying and pain will be no more. And as the whole creation groans even while we ourselves groan, awaiting that final redemption, I find my comfort—and I pray you find yours—in the God who so loved this world that he sent his only Son to die for it.

But this morning, I stand before you to say that my comfort is not enough. Your comfort is not enough. In a society that feels like it’s coming apart at the seams, an ‘every man for himself’ mentality is not enough for those in the body of Christ. Our nation is suffering, and the church’s response cannot just be to lick its own wounds.

There is a pain, a shared sadness, that we as the church can and must speak to; there is suffering that we can and must minister to. It is our responsibility as followers of Jesus Christ. Listen to these words from 2 Corinthians 1:3-5: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ.”

You and I are blessed today, because as believers we have a place where we can come in the affliction of our shared sadness and be consoled. We can pray to the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, believing He hears us and that He cares. We can gather as a church family and grieve with one another, we can pray and fast and lament together. And no one has to tell us to do that; I don’t have to remind you to bear one another’s burdens—it is in our bones that the church is a family that shares sadness together and then responds to that sadness by sharing grace together.

But there are many grieving today, in the black community and the police community and the American community at large, who do not know the peace that we seek together this morning. They wonder why the world is like this, they wonder if there is any hope, and they have no answer. They may offer up a prayer, hoping but not quite believing that someone hears it. They weep bitterly today just as we do, but they do so without a brother or sister to hold them.

And for too long, we in the church have responded to their pain with a lazy, manipulative proposition: any time you want to try things our way, the doors are open. We’ll be in here, sitting in our pews, singing our songs, worshiping our God, and you’re welcome to sit at the back and figure it out at your leisure. Just don’t expect us to change for you.

Church, the Holy Spirit convicts me today and tells me that’s just not going to cut it anymore. Our world is too pained and too painful for the church of Jesus Christ to adopt the mentality of a social club. We have to do more, we have to think deeper, we have to love better. No longer can we be defined strictly by what happens inside these walls; if our goal is to be like Christ, then we must be defined by what we do outside of them.

‘Sharing the gospel’ can no longer just be evangelical code for recruiting new members; it can no longer just be something we do when membership is dropping and giving is down. The gospel can no longer be just a three-point canned speech; its power can no longer be something we condense into a cheap pamphlet. It has to be our very way of life, our mission, when we are together and when we are apart. We have to go places where we are uncomfortable, talk to people who make us uncomfortable, forgive behavior that make us uncomfortable—because following Jesus means abandoning what’s best for you for the sake of someone else.

It is time, long past time, for believers to extend grace beyond our familiar circle of acquaintances. It is time, long past time, for us to look beyond ourselves, beyond our own families, beyond our own friends, beyond those who look like us and talk like us and act like us and believe like us, to the Other. It is time, long past time, for our love to be as unconditional as our Lord’s—for us to be just as shaken when a black father dies as when a white father dies, just as horrified when a victim is named Trayvon as when he is named Patrick. It is time, long past time, for us to hug the black protester and then hug the white cop just as tight, because both are made in God’s image, both are worthy of love, and both are hurting.

You can believe Alton Sterling’s and Philando Castile’s deaths were senseless and believe the deaths of Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarippa, Michael Krol, Lorne Ahrens, and Michael Smith (the five officers killed in Dallas) were senseless. In fact, you should. All of them died too young, all of them left grieving families behind, all of their deaths were tragic. It is time, long past time, for the church to stop looking to politicians and pundits and talk radio for our cues on what is right and who is right. Our citizenship is in heaven; let’s take our cues from there.

Let’s leave this sanctuary today consoled in our affliction by the Father of mercies, and having been comforted, let’s take that consolation to others who are afflicted. Let’s step outside our usual circle and stand beside the communities that are hurting—not so we can command them, not even so we can convert them, but so we can console them in Jesus’ name. Let our response to violence and injustice not be pointed fingers or raised voices, but healing hands and open hearts.

I am tired and I know you are too—tired of the division, tired of the anger, tired of the bloodshed—but I also know our exhaustion pales in comparison to what some are feeling today. So let us worship in spirit and in truth, let us gather strength from our God and from one another, and then let us go to work renewed. The work of consolation cannot stop here in this sanctuary; it must be something we carry with us to the brokenhearted. It must be something we bring to black lives, something we bring to blue lives, something we bring to poor lives, something we bring to imprisoned lives, something we bring to divorced lives, something we bring to hurting, broken, desperate lives.

Because in the face of despair, people from every walk of life—those we know well and those we need to know better—need to see and hear that God offers hope. Amid all the bad news, people need to see and hear the good news. In the wake of too many senseless deaths, people need to know that there was one death, a death on a cross, that was just as unjust, just as tragic, but that from its apparent senselessness came salvation. People need to know that death is not the end, that in Christ there is resurrection. As the song says, people need the Lord—and we are called to be his witnesses. So may we not just come to church, but go and be the church, sharing sadness and sharing grace not only with one another, but with all who weep. Amen.

Who's to Judge? (Friday Devotional)

“The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.”

- Psalm 7:8

There are some things we want God to do for us, and then there are those things we would rather he only do for other people. Lead me, guide me, empower me, encourage me, forgive me—all of these are prayers we’re quick to utter. Following the examples of countless prayers in the Bible, we look to God for that strength which is beyond our own means, expectantly hoping that from His grace He will give us what we lack. We long for the wisdom, mercy, and love of God to be made manifest in our lives, and so we rightfully do not hesitate to ask.

But while we are quick to appeal for God’s grace for ourselves, God’s justice is something we tend to only want for other people: rebuke him, judge her, punish them. When someone else steps out of line, we want to see righteousness more than restoration—we expect God to hand out the sort of divine discipline that keeps the scales weighted toward justice, and our prayers reflect that. But when we are the ones who falter, justice is the furthest thing from our minds.

So Psalm 7 makes for an uncomfortable reading experience, because the psalmist asks God to do something dangerous: “Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.” Seeking refuge from God in the midst of persecution—one of those prayers that rolls off the tongue pretty quickly—the psalmist nevertheless has the humility to seek not only God’s grace for himself, but His justice. “If I have done this, if there is wrong on my hands,” he says in v. 3, then I want to see things set right. Not my will, but Yours be done.

Is that something you could pray? Are you so confident in your integrity that you would ask God to judge you based entirely upon it?

Most Christians, I suspect, would flee from such a prayer. Even those who pride themselves on their integrity would shudder to think how they would be judged apart from the righteousness freely given to them through faith in Christ. We are all imperfect, all sinners, and so none would ask to be held to God’s perfect standard of justice without the grace of God in Christ to bail us out.

And that recognition should change how you pray, not only for yourself, but for others. Instead of seeking grace when you stumble only to demand justice when others fall, remember that in Christ justice and grace are inextricably bound together. Rather than treating grace as a privilege extended to you alone, treat is as the good news it is, something to be extended to those otherwise condemned. Instead of responding to sinners with angry condemnation, follow Jesus’s example, responding with the assured compassion of one who knows grace’s power to save.

You would not wish judgment on yourself apart from Christ, so may you be slow to wish it upon others. Instead, may you lift up others—from your closest friends to your most bitter enemies—in prayers covered with grace, desiring and extending the same mercy to them which you desire for yourself. For truly, God’s grace is big enough for the both of you.

Everybody's a Critic (Friday Devotional)

“My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

- Galatians 6:1-2

Everybody’s a critic, the expression says. Give somebody the opportunity and they’re rarely shy about telling you why they don’t like what they’ve observed—why a movie is terrible, why their workplace is terrible, why a political party is terrible. Criticism comes naturally, and seldom are we shy about expressing it.

Such criticism gets both quieter and more intense when it is directed at a specific person. It’s one thing to pinpoint the faults of a work of art, quite another to do so to a human being—such criticism is automatically more personal, and so generally more hurtful. But it seems we can’t help ourselves—when somebody acts outside your expectations of reasonable behavior, it takes every ounce of self-control you have not to speak up.

A cursory glance of Galatians 6:1 seems to give license to the Christian critic: “if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one”. In other words, if anyone messes up, it’s your duty to criticize them, to correct them, perhaps even to shame them. It’s what Jesus would want!

But a closer look at that verse and the one that follows it reveals that the Christian response to wrongdoing is not criticism from afar, but accountability that walks beside the one who has fallen. The believer in Christ does not approach sinners with self-righteousness, but “a spirit of gentleness”, seeking not to shame them with harangues and lectures, but to restore them to faithfulness. The goal of Christian accountability is not for the saint to feel superior to the sinner, but for the sinner be raised to righteousness in Christ.

It is in this spirit that Paul reminds us what ultimately separates the Christian from the critic—holding a brother or sister accountable means not only do you recognize when they have done wrong, but that you walk alongside them in their struggle, that you “bear one another’s burdens.” Hurling condemnations from a distance is not a luxury afforded to the Christian, because faith binds you not only to Christ but to his church. When one struggles, we share in that struggle.

Think about someone in your life who’s easy to criticize—someone who’s unreliable, who takes more than they give, who can never seem to get their life in order. What is your response to that person—to invest in them, bearing their burdens and pointing them to Christ in a spirit of gentleness, or to criticize them from a safe distance? May you respond to wrongdoing as Christ does—not fearfully separating yourself from sinners in a spirit of self-righteous criticism, but drawing closer to them in a spirit of righteous love.