Foolproof Plans (Friday Devotional)

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

- Jeremiah 29:11

Corey Allen Patrick’s plan was simple: when the right car rolled up to the stop light at Tim Kemp Drive and Gynerium Drive, he’d get the driver’s attention, approach the vehicle, and as soon as they rolled the window down to talk he’d forcefully pull them out of the car, jump in the driver’s seat, and take off. It was a simple plan, to be sure, but one he’d seen carried out successfully before.

When the time came to go through with it, things initially went exactly as planned. A car with a driver and no passengers pulled up to the traffic light, so Patrick waved his arms and approached it. The driver rolled down the window to see what he wanted, and Patrick calmly told him: “Get out of the car.” The driver, eyes wide, hastily rolled up the window, so Patrick smashed it open. Grabbing the driver by his arm, Patrick started brutally beating him, then yanked him out of his seat and climbed in himself, leaving the stunned driver lying on the street.

But that was when his plan suddenly went awry. Looking down at the dashboard and gear shift, Patrick realized he’d never seen a car quite like this one. He fiddled with the gear shift, unsuccessfully trying to put it in drive, but he couldn’t get it to do what he wanted. Beginning to panic at this unexpected problem, he looked up at the dashboard and through the windshield he saw a neighbor running toward the car waving machete. In an instant, Patrick abandoned his plan altogether, leaping back out of the car and running for his life. Eventually he was found by police hiding in some nearby tall grass and was arrested for the attempted carjacking. What had foiled his plan? He had tried to steal an electric car, which the owner would later say “takes some getting used to,” and he didn’t know how to drive it.

Sometimes even your simplest plans for the future are derailed the way Corey Allen Patrick’s was. We live in a society that expects you to always have a plan: a five-year plan, a career plan, a retirement plan. But life has a way of making a mockery of those plans—all it takes is one accident, one unexpected layoff, one word of bad news from your doctor to render your plans obsolete. No matter how good your plans are, you can never truly know if things will play out like you envision them.

For believers, our comfort comes in the knowledge that, while we don’t know what our future looks like, God does. Our plans are finite and imperfect, often tinged with pride and greed, but God’s are not. Even as He did for His people in the days of Jeremiah, God has a plan for His people today, a plan that may include valleys of suffering along the way, but that ends in the glory of the New Jerusalem.

When you place all your hope in your own plans, you are setting yourself up for inevitable moments of confusion, anger, and hopelessness, times when you’ll suddenly realize of your future, “I don’t know how to drive this thing.” Better then to trust God with your future, to seek His will instead of hoping He’ll bless yours. He may not take you exactly where you hoped to go, but unlike when you’re in the driver’s seat, you’ll always be sure He knows what He’s doing.

Fully Focused (Friday Devotional)

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

- Hebrews 12:2

In an NBA Finals game, there’s a lot to see. There are thousands of fans cheering, jeering, waving, drinking, and chatting with their neighbors. There is the endless stream of colorful graphics and videos on the electronic scoreboard above midcourt. There are the coaches frantically running up and down the sidelines, the bench mob cheering on their teammates, and the media members making sense of it all for the television audience back home. And, of course, there is the game happening on the court—ten professional basketball players setting screens, drawing fouls, corralling rebounds, and driving to the paint.

Jim Vanderford has been to every NBA Finals since 2007, but he’s missed out on seeing a lot of what I just described. That’s because, as a camera operator for ABC and ESPN, he’s had one job during the Finals for the past decade: pointing the camera at LeBron James. In a star-driven league, the networks know that missing a key moment from basketball’s biggest star would be professional malpractice on their part, so Vanderford’s job is simple—whether LeBron is dunking, shooting, passing, barking instructions to teammates in the huddle, or sipping Gatorade on the bench, Jim Vanderford gets it on film. He never allows the camera’s gaze to wander to any of King James’s teammates, coaches, or opponents, nor to anything happening in the stands. No matter what else is happening around him, he is locked on LeBron.

Hebrews 12:2 calls us to that kind of single-minded focus when it comes to faith in Christ. Like a Finals game, the world is packed with sights and sounds that pull our attention away from God. Idols, though no longer towering over us as statues of wood and bronze, are just as real today as in the days of the Israelites. Every day we are tempted by the siren calls of power, wealth, and renown.

But in the face of all these attractions and distractions, Scripture calls us to fix our eyes on Jesus. For all the lures that earthly idols have, they cannot offer the salvation he gave us on the cross; they cannot promise the life with God which is our reward in Christ. Idols demand your attention, your time, and even your soul, but they ultimately offer little in return.

Every moment you have a choice where to turn your attention, your faith, and your love. So with the kind of focus that would do Jim Vanderford proud, fix your eyes on the one who matters most.

Full Immersion (Friday Devotional)

“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”

- Colossians 3:9-10

Sam Houston is one of the most distinctive figures in the history of both our state and our nation: he served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, as Commander-in-Chief of the Texas Army and then as its first president, and as governor of Tennessee and, decades later, Texas. He was also, however, a notorious drunk, brawler, and all-around scoundrel, nearly as infamous around Texas for his drinking binges and fistfights as for his military and political accomplishments.

So it was no small feat when, guided by his third wife Margaret, he came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ at the age of 63 and committed to living for the Lord for the rest of his life. Dozens of people in and around Independence, Texas gathered at Little Rocky Creek to see Rufus Burleson, the president of Baylor University, baptize Houston. But before Burleson immersed the senator, he pointed out to him that he might want to set aside his fine leather wallet, which Houston had failed to remove when he changed into his baptismal clothes. “No, I believe not, pastor,” said Houston with a smile. “I’m afraid it needs baptizing too.”

We can all learn something from Sam Houston’s witness in this case, because sometimes we prefer to leave parts of our lives unbaptized. Whether in the cutthroat world of business, in conversations with friends, or even—as Houston cleverly indicated—in the ways we spend our money, it’s tempting to keep God at arm’s length. The sad truth is that, for many, faith is something compartmentalized and siphoned away from those areas of life where following Jesus is inconvenient.

But the Bible makes clear that when you accept Jesus as Lord, there is no room for casual commitment. “You have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self,” says Paul. Faith in Christ is not about self-improvement or behavioral modification, but about total transformation.

The greatest commandment, Jesus says, is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength—in other words, with everything you have to give. So take a moment to ask, am I living up to that command, or have I declared parts of my life off limits to God? Like Sam Houston’s wallet, maybe those things need to be baptized too.

The Evangelical Problem with Triggering the Libs

A week ago, a group of more than 50 conservative evangelical leaders, most notably John McArthur, published “The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel” a list of affirmations and denials of belief based upon their concerns about “questionable sociological, psychological, and political theories presently permeating our culture and making inroads into Christ's church.” The affirmations were largely rote and, for the most part, might as well have been copied and pasted from The 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. The denials, however, made some noise.

On Scripture: “We deny that the postmodern ideologies derived from intersectionality, radical feminism, and critical race theory are consistent with biblical teaching.” On the church: “We deny that political or social activism should be viewed as integral components of the gospel or primary to the mission of the church.” On the gospel: “Implications and applications of the gospel, such as the obligation to live justly in the world, though legitimate and important in their own right, are not definitional components of the gospel.” There are fourteen categories total, including sexuality and marriage, race/ethnicity, and culture, but you get the idea.

Pastors, scholars, and denominational leaders have largely denounced the statement and its arguments against social justice as theologically feeble, historically blind, and needlessly divisive. While I take issue with much of what the statement says (and doesn’t say—for example, the kingdom of God isn’t mentioned once), I’ll leave it to those wiser and more eloquent than I to pick it apart line by line. What I want to take a moment to discuss instead is the implicit purpose behind the statement: triggering the libs.

With rhetoric that is persuasive neither in intention nor execution, there should be little doubt that that was the statement's purpose. This document is not trying to win any converts or sway any skeptics; it is feeding red meat to the base. It is the theological equivalent of an episode of Hannity, designed to hammer home a narrative for those sympathetic to its ideology and to rile up those who oppose it. It doesn't want a debate, it wants the last word.

More and more, I fear, that is becoming the bread and butter of conservative evangelicals' discourse—rather than engaging with critics, we insult them. Instead of countering arguments, we shut them down with acerbic memes. Instead of talking, we shout.

I can't count the number of times that I've logged onto Facebook and seen a brother or sister in Christ post a status or share a meme which has no purpose other than to mock a liberal politician, cause, or argument. No debate is being advanced, no point is being made...it just feels good to take a cheap shot. But let me offer a word of caution: "triggering the libs" hurts your Christian witness.

You can disagree with the protests of Colin Kaepernick and NFL players, and you can argue why they're disrespectful. But when you descend to insulting Kaepernick personally, you're not advancing an argument, you're just being spiteful.

You can think the Democratic Party's flirtations with socialism are foolish and/or dangerous. But when you jump to Nazi comparisons, you're giving a lesson in histrionics, not history.

And yes, you can be grateful Hillary Clinton isn't the President, and even grateful that Donald Trump is. But when you ask out loud what kind of any idiot would vote for "Killary," you may feel like a winner, but you sound nothing like Jesus.

The world is a fallen place, where ungodly ideas routinely take hold and wreak havoc on cultural norms that Christians hold dear. But the answer to sin is not more sin; fighting fire with fire only burns the house down faster. Jesus told us how counter darkness: by being lights to the world, witnesses to his grace, glory, and love.

Fox News pundits will continue to delight in triggering the libs, and pastors like Robert Jeffress and John McArthur will join in and find biblical prooftexts to justify doing so. But rank-and-file conservative evangelicals need not follow their example—we can lead instead. We can listen to, engage with, and love our neighbors, especially the ones we don't agree with. We can practice mercy and forgiveness instead of dominance and self-righteousness. We can make a change by choosing, preaching, and showing the light of Christ to a dark world.

You feel good when you trigger the libs. You do good when you love them.

Too Little Too Late (Friday Devotional)

No one who conceals transgressions will prosper, but one who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

- Proverbs 28:13

When customers arrived at the Shipley’s Donuts shop in Houston in the middle of the day, they probably expected to have the place to themselves. But that hope was shattered when three men came barging through the front door—one of them waving a gun. Two of the men hopped over the counter to demand money from the cash register, while the other grabbed phones and wallets from the customers. As this third man waited for his partners to collect the cash, security camera footage shows him speaking calmly with the customers, possibly telling them it would all be over soon.

After a minute or two, the other thieves jumped back over the counter with their haul, making their way toward the door, and the third robber did something strange. Grabbing a couple of fresh donuts from behind the counter, he gently handed them to the petrified customers, then left hastily with his partners. He’d stolen their cash, their credit cards, and their cell phones—but at the last minute, he’d tried to make up for it with a couple of free donuts.

In a sense, we often treat God the same way that armed robber treated those customers—we try to patch up our sins with slight gestures of contrition, hoping that our small acts of penance will make up for larger failings. We lie to our spouse and then guiltily put a little extra in the offering plate at church. We lash out at a stranger online and then try to make up for it with some Bible reading that night. We wallow in hypocrisy and pride on Saturday and then show up Sunday morning to atone for our sins with worship.

Like the customers in that donut shop, God is not impressed with the crumbs we throw His way—He is not interested in our guilt, but our repentance. Repentance is more than just remorse for our sin, it means turning away from sin and toward Him. It’s one thing to recognize your failings, but it takes far more courage and faith to reverse course.

The gospel teaches us that in Christ, redemption begins with repentance, with the turning of your face from sin toward the cross. So when you fall short of the image of God, don’t settle for trifling acts of contrition; don’t try to barter your way toward forgiveness. Instead, turn from your failures to Christ’s victory. It is not your gifts of guilt that can save you—only God’s gift of grace.